CSV File Formatting Issues

Through Grip, users have the ability to import and export CSV files and these files may contain special characters such as é, ȁ, ü. When opening these files in Excel, these can be incorrectly displayed:

Turns into:

This issue can occur because the CSV file is UTF-8 encoded and Excel doesn't have automatically apply UTF-8 when opening CSV files. This issue can happen for both Windows and Mac Excel files.

In order to resolve the issue, the following steps need to be taken when opening the CSV file:

1. Open a Blank Excel file.

2. Click on Data > From Text/CSV.

3. Choose the relevant CSV file and import. The following wizard will be displayed, which the settings can vary:

4. The following settings need to be applied:

File Origin: 65001: Unicode (UTF-8)

Data Type Detection: Based on entire dataset


5. Once this has been done, the preview should display correctly and the file will look similar to this: