CSV Encoding Fixer

EXCEL / CSV · GARBLED TEXT

Does Excel show
garbled Chinese text?

The file is often fine, but Excel is reading it with the wrong encoding. Preview the CSV, then export an Excel-friendly UTF-8 BOM file.

Open the CSV fixer

When does UTF-8 BOM help?

Some Excel versions do not reliably identify UTF-8 from a CSV's bytes alone. A UTF-8 BOM is a small marker at the beginning of the file that helps Excel choose the right encoding.

Chinese becomes question marks

If you see ???, check whether the original file uses GBK or GB18030.

Chinese becomes strange symbols

Characters such as Ã, æ or other mojibake usually mean the source encoding was read incorrectly.

Excel opens the file incorrectly

Confirm the preview, then export a CSV with UTF-8 BOM for a cleaner Excel import.

Keep the original file

If the original already contains many ? or � characters, the text may have been lost during export. Encoding conversion can read existing bytes correctly, but it cannot restore replaced characters.

Keep a copy of the original CSV. Download a new file only after the preview looks correct.

Other common encodings

GBK to UTF-8 CSV is useful for Windows and legacy exports. For Traditional Chinese files, try Big5 to UTF-8 CSV.