Save a UTF-8 CSV instead of Excel’s plain CSV

What does Excel’s plain CSV save change?

Microsoft’s article on features that are not transferred says CSV (Comma delimited) saves only the text and values as they are displayed on the active worksheet. Columns are separated by commas, and each row ends in a carriage return. A cell that contains a comma is enclosed in double quotation marks. Formatting, graphics, and other worksheet contents are lost. The same article says the euro symbol will be converted to a question mark.

That article also says a workbook with special font characters, such as a copyright symbol, should be saved in the text format for the operating system that will read it. Its examples are CSV (Macintosh) and CSV (Windows). The Windows save-as article lists CSV (comma delimited), CSV (Macintosh), and CSV (MS-DOS). It says the formats you see depend on the active sheet. That table does not list a UTF-8 CSV type.

When is the file actually UTF-8?

Microsoft’s Excel for Mac formats article lists CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) separately from Comma Separated Values. The UTF-8 row says the export complies with UTF-8 Unicode encoding, and that cell properties, formulas, graphics, and formatting are not preserved. On the page retrieved on 2 November 2026, that row is marked Excel 2016 for Mac only, while the article’s Applies To line also names later Mac editions. The Comma Separated Values row says the file uses commas. It does not say the file is UTF-8.

Microsoft’s Outlook guidance for contact files shows Excel’s Save As type CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) (*.csv) when the text includes characters outside the English alphabet. The examples it gives are Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, and Japanese. Use the save type your installed Excel shows. Renaming a plain CSV does not make it UTF-8, and it does not put replaced characters back.

How do you check the text before import?

1. Keep the workbook, and keep any earlier CSV that still shows the original names.
2. If you save from Excel, choose the UTF-8 CSV type when it is in the list. Open the result in a text editor and look at a euro sign and one non-English name.
3. Microsoft’s opening article says a UTF-8 CSV opens normally in Excel when it was saved with a byte-order mark. Without that marker, use Data, Get Data, From File, From Text/CSV, or Get Data From Text.
4. In Golanto, open “My file looks different” and set “How the file was saved” to Standard when the export is UTF-8. Choose Older Excel on Windows only when the file was actually saved that way. Golanto’s Excel comma and Excel semicolon downloads write UTF-8, a byte-order mark, and Windows CRLF. They do not replace a euro sign with a question mark.
5. If the file already contains a question mark where the catalog had a euro sign, choosing Standard does not restore the character. Return to a workbook or export that still has it.

Worked example

A synthetic title that still contains the euro sign

SKU,Title
00021,Café cup €12

SKU,Title
00021,Café cup €12

Microsoft says CSV (Comma delimited) converts the euro symbol to a question mark. A question mark saved in place of € is a different character. Golanto does not turn that question mark back into a euro sign.

Official references

• Microsoft: formatting lost in CSV and other text formats (opens in a new tab)
• Microsoft: file formats supported in Excel for Mac (opens in a new tab)
• Microsoft: opening CSV UTF-8 files in Excel (opens in a new tab)
• Microsoft: save a workbook to text or CSV (opens in a new tab)
• Microsoft: save Outlook contacts as CSV UTF-8 (opens in a new tab)

Schema review: golanto-csv-1. Examples are synthetic. Store-specific and unpublished requirements are outside these checks.

Common questions

Continue reading

• Add or remove a UTF-8 BOM before import
• Fix unreadable characters in a product CSV
• Choose a download format
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