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FAQ How to solve corrupted characters in exported csv file

How to solve corrupted characters in exported csv file

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Question

When I open the exported CSV file, some characters look garbled, for example “é” instead of “é”. How do I fix this?


Answer

CSV files exported from PlatoForms open in Excel with every character shown correctly, including accented letters, non-Latin scripts such as Chinese or Arabic, and symbols. This applies to submission exports, the CSV attached to notification emails, the CSV uploaded to your cloud drive, and Insights report exports.

If you still see garbled characters, it is usually for one of these reasons:

  • The file was downloaded a long time ago. Download it again from your submissions.
  • The file was opened and saved by another program before you opened it in Excel, and that program changed how the characters are stored. Download a fresh copy and open it in Excel directly.
  • The file was already saved as an Excel file with the garbled characters. The characters cannot be repaired in that file; download the CSV again.

Open a CSV file in Excel with the correct characters

If a CSV file still shows garbled characters, you can tell Excel which encoding to use:

  1. Open Excel with a blank workbook.
  2. Go to the Data tab and click From Text/CSV.
  3. Select the CSV file.
  4. In the preview window, set File Origin to 65001: Unicode (UTF-8) and check that the preview looks right.
  5. Click Load.

You can then save it as an Excel file and the characters stay correct.

Google Sheets also opens the CSV file with the correct characters: go to File, Import, Upload and select the file.