Character encoding in exported CSV/Excel files

Most of our plugins have an option to export data to CSV/Excel files, like for example the Contact Form to Email that has many CSV based reports. When importing those reports into a Excel application the character encoding may be incorrect depending of the local Excel application settings. If this happens follow these steps to correctly import the file:

  1. Save the exported file as a csv
  2. Open Excel
  3. Import the data using Data–>Import External Data –> Import Data
  4. Select the file type of “csv” and browse to your file
  5. In the import wizard change the File_Origin to the related language character identifier
  6. Change the Delimiter to comma if needed
  7. Select where to import to and Finish

This way the special characters should show correctly.