Update: Excel 2007 and higher automatically detects encoding and does not require the steps below. If you are using an older version follow these steps:
Extended characters (UTF-8 characters) can be preserved if the spreadsheet program opens the file with UTF-8 encoding. For Excel it does not support opening CSV files with special characters, or UTF-8 characters, but there is a workaround. Below are the steps for preserving special characters in a csv import: (this may vary by different Excel versions)
- Open Excel
- Import the data using Data–>Import External Data –> Import Data (or From Text option)
If you’re on OSX, the menu option is File –> Import. - Select the file type of “csv” and browse to your file
- In the import wizard change the File Origin to “65001 Unicode (UTF 8)” (or choose correct language character identifier)
- Change the delimiter to comma (or delimiter used by your CSV)
- Select where to import to and Finish
If you happen to be using Open Office or Libre Office when the file is opened there is an option to select UTF-8. For example:
