How to Make Special Characters Display Properly in Excel

If the CSV file you downloaded from the console includes special characters such as "ñ" or other characters that are not part of Basic Latin script, you may have trouble viewing those special characters in Excel.  Below are instructions about how to open the CSV file to ensure special characters display correctly.

1. Open a blank workbook in Excel.
2. Under the Data tab, select From Text.
   
3. From the file browser, navigate to the CSV file you downloaded. Once selected, click Get Data.
4. From the File origin drop-down menu, select Unicode (UTF-8).

   NOTE:

   Make sure that Delimited is selected instead of Fixed width so that your data will be separated into columns.

   
5. Click Next.
6. On the next screen, select Comma under the Delimiters field. With this option selected, a comma in the CSV file will indicate that a new column needs to be created. This allows for your information to be presented in separate columns for each field instead of having all of the data in one column.
   
7. Click Next.
8. For the final step of the import, you have the option to set the data format for each column. You can leave this setting at the default setting (General). When you are done, click Finish.
9. Choose the location where you want the data to be imported to and click OK. 

Back to Top