The Excel UTF-8 gotcha

The Excel UTF-8 gotcha

The Microsoft Excel Unicode UTF-8 Gotcha

Pretty unbelievable, but true, is that (since Office 2003?) Microsoft Excel cannot properly handle Unicode UTF-8 Import and Export to look after your accented and other special characters used on your website. (Try exporting µ ≥ or ≤ or just a ° Degree sign!)

You can get Excel to import UTF-8 Menu > Data > From Text > CSV file > Import dialogue: [options] UTF-8

But it will screw up on your carriage return/line feeds, and the data will be (literally) all over the place. Duh!

The only option I have found that worked was to use LibreOffice Calc (and not ApacheOffice Calc, where IFERROR() doesn’t seem to work).

Using that for Unicode UTF-8 Imports and Exports worked absolutely fine, and your Website will look like it should…

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