Fix a CSV that Excel garbles
An export shows é instead of é, or boxes instead of letters. The cause is an encoding mismatch (UTF-8 without the mark Excel wants, or another encoding).
Steps
- Drop the CSV on "Fix garbled CSV". The encoding is detected.
- Press the preset "Open in Excel" and save (UTF-8 with the byte-order mark).
- Double-click the saved file. No import wizard needed.
- Many files at once needs the Pass; one at a time stays free.
Questions
- Do I have to fix it every time?
- No. Once saved with "Open in Excel", it opens correctly from then on.
- Is the original changed?
- No. The fixed file is saved separately.
- What if the CSV was saved after it went garbled?
- Drop it on “Fix garbled text”: cells that look garbled are found column by column, and in the columns you tick, the cells that come back as proper text are put back. Characters already saved as “?” or “�” cannot be recovered.
The CSV is never uploaded; everything runs in this browser.