CSV export: export in unrecognized characters

11 posts by 4 authors in: Forums > CMS Builder: Plugins & Add-ons
Last Post: March 1, 2019   (RSS)

Hi,

Have you tried looking at the file contents in a regular TXT editor to see how they appear there?

Check to see if Excel is opening the CSV as "Standard" or "Text" for the Column Type. I believe you'll want to make sure it's set as "Text" for the Column Type. I use LibreOffice but they both work similarly.

Best,
Steve

Hi Steve

I checked with TextEdit and it seems there are no non-recognizable characters there. Additionally, when I use the Numbers software (Excel likewise software), everything seems ok. However, the problem with Microsoft Excel is still there: non-recognizable characters and all data in one cell.

Andreas

Hi Andreas,

Okay, that's a good sign knowing the data displays properly in those programs :)

As for Excel, it must be the data import options. For example, if the delimiter is set to something other than Comma all data would display in one cell. You'd want to make sure the delimiter is set as Comma and text qualifier as "double quotes". The characters display issue is likely the Column Data Format, which you'll want to make sure is set as Text.

Here's a pretty good data import wizard walk-through with screen shots:
https://www.hesa.ac.uk/support/user-guides/import-csv

Best,
Steve

Hi Steve

I managed to open the .csv file as an Excel worksheet. Nevertheless, greek language words are presented with unrecognizable letters like 

Αθανάσιος

Do you have any idea how to solve it?

Regards

Andreas

Hi Andreas,

Might need the Microsoft Office Language Accessory Pack:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/language-accessory-pack-for-office-82ee1236-0f9a-45ee-9c72-05b026ee809f

If that doesn't help, offhand I honestly wouldn't be sure what the next troubleshooting step would be. Hopefully that does help, or someone else might have some additional insight.

Best,
Steve

By Dave - February 22, 2019

Andreas, I wanted to check if you got this resolved or are you still having issues with it? 

Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com

Hi Dave

Thank you for your interest. Unfortunately, the problem still exists as long as it regards the Microsoft Excel. On the contrary, it seems to work well in Apple Numbers. 

Anyways, thank again for your update.

Andreas

By Dave - February 27, 2019

Hi Andreas, 

I did some research on this and found the answer.  Much of the content on the web is encoding in what's called UTF8.  In UTF8 multiple bytes are sometimes used to encode a single character.  It turns out that Excel has very poor support for UTF8.  So it's showing you the individual bytes.

If you manually select the character set it will work.  Here's how I did it on my computer:

  1. Open Microsoft Office 365
  2. Click "Data" Tab > From File > From Text/CSV
  3. Select filename
  4. Select "From Origin": 65001: Unicode (UTF-8)

References: 

Hope that helps!

Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com

By andreasml - March 1, 2019

Hi Dave

Thank you for your reply.

Regards

Andreas