Special characters (é, è, ç, etc) in downloaded CSV files

Owned by Jamal Naveed
Last updated: Aug 29, 2024 by Adi A
1 min read

A problem with Microsoft Excel can cause issues for customers with accented (non-English) characters in downloaded CSV files. This issue is known to Microsoft as: 

  • "Microsoft Excel is unable to properly display UTF-8 compliant CSV files when they contain non-English characters."

If you are affected by this issue, you can resolve it yourself. Here are the steps: 

  • On a Windows computer, open the CSV file using Notepad.

  • Click "File > Save As".

  • In the dialog window that appears - select "ANSI" from the "Encoding" field. Then click "Save".

  • Open this new CSV file using Excel.

Non-English characters will now appear correctly in the file. 

On a Mac, you can resolve the issue by using Numbers to open the file instead of Excel.