Convert Excel to CSV without breaking the accents
You export an Excel file to CSV, open it, and where it said "Peña" it now says "Peña". You did nothing wrong: it is an encoding problem with a fix.
3 minute read
Why it happens
A CSV is plain text and says nowhere which alphabet it was written in. The program opening it has to guess. If the file was saved as UTF-8 and Excel reads it as the old Western alphabet, every accented letter breaks into two symbols.
The fix is a small invisible marker at the start of the file, the BOM, which tells Excel "this is UTF-8". It takes three bytes and solves the whole problem.
How to convert
Drag your .xlsx or .xls file into the conversion tool.
Pick CSV as the output format.
Download the result and open it. The accents will be correct.
The other classic problem: the columns
In Spain and Latin America the comma is the decimal separator, so a comma-separated CSV can split numbers in half. If that happens, use TSV instead: it separates with tabs and the conflict disappears.
What is lost going to CSV
- Formulas. The calculated result is stored, not the formula.
- Formatting. Colours, bold, borders and column widths all vanish.
- Extra sheets. A CSV holds one table only; the first sheet is kept.
- Charts and images. They have no equivalent in plain text.
In exchange you get a file every program in the world opens, that weighs a fraction, and that does not corrupt. That is why it is the standard format for moving data between systems.