How to Fix Character Encoding Issues When Opening CSV Files in Excel on Windows

You open a CSV file in Excel and see garbled text, question marks, or strange symbols instead of letters. This happens because Excel is interpreting the file’s text encoding incorrectly. This article explains what character encoding is and provides step-by-step methods to open your CSV files correctly.

Why Excel Shows Garbled Text in CSV Files

Character encoding is a system that maps text characters to numbers a computer can store. Common encodings include UTF-8, Windows-1252, and ISO-8859-1. A CSV file saved with UTF-8 encoding might display as gibberish if Excel opens it using the Windows-1252 code page by default. This mismatch causes special characters, accents, or non-Latin alphabets to appear broken.

Excel for Windows often defaults to the system’s regional ANSI code page, which varies. On a US-English system, this is Windows-1252. Excel for Mac defaults to Mac Roman. When you double-click a CSV file, Excel uses these defaults without asking, leading to encoding errors. The solution is to control the import process and specify the correct encoding.

Steps to Import a CSV With Correct Encoding

Do not double-click the CSV file to open it. Use one of these import methods instead to choose the encoding.

Method 1: Use Get & Transform Data (Excel 2016 and Later)

1. Open a blank workbook
   Launch Excel and start with a new, empty file.
2. Go to the Data tab
   Click on the Data tab in the ribbon.
3. Click From Text/CSV
   In the Get & Transform Data group, click the From Text/CSV button.
4. Select your CSV file
   Navigate to and select the problematic CSV file, then click Import.
5. Set the File Origin
   In the preview window, click the dropdown for File Origin. Select the correct encoding, such as UTF-8 or 65001: Unicode (UTF-8). The preview will update.
6. Load the data
   Click the Load button to import the CSV with the chosen encoding into your worksheet.

Method 2: Use the Legacy Text Import Wizard

This method works in all versions of Excel, including older ones.

1. Open Excel to a blank workbook
   Do not open the file directly.
2. Click File > Open
   Select Open from the File menu.
3. Browse to your CSV file
   In the Open dialog, navigate to the folder containing your CSV.
4. Change the file type filter
   Next to the file name box, click the dropdown and select All Files or Text Files.
5. Select the file and click Open
   This action launches the Text Import Wizard.
6. Choose Delimited and click Next
   In Step 1 of the wizard, select Delimited, then click Next.
7. Set the File Origin
   At the top of the wizard window, find the File Origin dropdown. Select Unicode (UTF-8) or another appropriate encoding.
8. Complete the wizard
   Click Next, ensure Comma is selected as the delimiter, click Next again, then click Finish.

If the Source CSV File Itself Is the Problem

Sometimes the file is saved in an obscure encoding. You can correct it before importing to Excel.

Excel Still Shows Garbled Text After Import

If the text remains incorrect after trying all import encodings, the CSV file likely has a corrupted or non-standard encoding. Open the file in a dedicated text editor like Notepad++. In the Encoding menu, you can view the current encoding and convert the file to UTF-8. Save the new version and try importing it again into Excel.

Special Characters Like € or £ Are Wrong

Currency symbols and special punctuation often fail in Windows-1252 files opened as UTF-8, or vice versa. When saving the CSV from your source application, explicitly choose UTF-8 encoding. If you control the data export, add a UTF-8 Byte Order Mark at the file’s start. This BOM helps Excel auto-detect UTF-8 encoding more reliably when the file is double-clicked.

Data With Multiple Languages Appears Broken

Files containing mixed scripts, like Japanese and French, must use UTF-8 encoding. ANSI code pages like Windows-1252 cannot store this multilingual data. Always use the Data > From Text/CSV import method and select 65001: Unicode (UTF-8) as the File Origin. This ensures all characters are mapped correctly.

CSV Import Methods Compared

Item	Double-Click to Open	Data > From Text/CSV	File > Open (Text Import Wizard)
Encoding Control	None. Uses system default	Full control via File Origin dropdown	Full control via File Origin dropdown
Best For	Simple, ASCII-only files	UTF-8 files and modern Excel	Older Excel versions and legacy encodings
Data Transformation	No	Yes, via Power Query editor	Limited, basic column formatting
Reliability with Special Chars	Low	High	High

You can now open CSV files in Excel without character corruption. Use the Data tab import for the most control over file encoding. For a permanent fix, ask the file creator to save CSVs as UTF-8 with a BOM. To handle extremely large or complex CSV files, consider using the Power Query editor to set the encoding and data types before loading, which prevents future import errors.