Fix weird characters (é, ’) in a CSV file
Characters such as é, ü or ’ appear when a UTF-8 file is read as if it were in an older Windows encoding. Sometimes the file is fine and only Excel shows it wrong; sometimes the garbled text was saved back into the file. The tool tells the two apart, repairs garbled text and saves a clean UTF-8 file.
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Several files? Select or drop them together to fix them all at once.
Sample files with typical import errors, loaded in your browser. Fixing and downloading them is free.
Why it happens
UTF-8 stores é as two bytes. A program that assumes Windows-1252 shows those two bytes as two characters: Ã and ©. Excel does this when you double-click a UTF-8 CSV that has no byte-order mark (BOM).
If you save the file after that, the garbled characters become the real content, and saving it the same way again makes it worse (é turns into é). The opposite also happens: a Windows-1250 or 1252 file read as UTF-8 shows � instead of letters.
- é → é, è → è, ü → ü, ö → ö, ä → ä
- ’ → ’, “ → “, – → –
- ł → Å‚, ś → Å›, ż → ż
How to fix it manually
Excel
- Don't double-click the file. Use Data → From Text/CSV, choose "65001: Unicode (UTF-8)" as the file origin and load it.
- Save with "CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited)". Excel then adds a BOM and opens the file correctly next time.
Notepad++
- If the text looks right in Notepad++, use Encoding → Convert to UTF-8.
- If it already shows é, converting won't help: the bytes themselves are wrong and need repairing.
Before and after
Name,Material
Café crème mug,Öko cottonName,Material
Café crème mug,Öko cottonText that was saved after being read in the wrong encoding, repaired back to the original letters.
Fix it automatically
- Detects the encoding: UTF-8, UTF-16, Windows-1250, 1251 or 1252, GBK.
- Repairs text garbled once or twice (é and é).
- Shows every repaired cell before and after.
- Saves as UTF-8, with an optional BOM so Excel opens it correctly, or as Windows-1250 if your importer needs it.
Checking and the preview are free. Downloads are free up to 50 rows; a larger file costs 1 credit.
Choose a fileThe file is read and repaired inside your browser. Nothing is uploaded: only the row count and the platform are ever sent to us, so supplier prices and customer data stay private.