CSV shows garbled characters: "é", "’" instead of é and ’ (mojibake)
Last reviewed 2026-09-19
Garbled letters like "é" for "é" happen when text saved as UTF-8 is opened as a different encoding (usually Windows-1252), or saved twice. Excel often assumes the wrong encoding for CSV files unless told otherwise.
Messages you might see
- “é, ü, ’ or � appear where accented letters should be”
- “Special characters broken in CSV import”
Why it happens
- A UTF-8 file was opened by a program that assumed Windows-1252 / Latin-1.
- The text was converted to UTF-8 twice (double encoding).
- The file was saved as UTF-8 without the byte-order mark Excel needs to recognise it.
Try this first (free, no tool needed)
- In Excel use Data > From Text/CSV and set File Origin to "65001: Unicode (UTF-8)".
- In a text editor such as Notepad++ or VS Code, reopen the file with UTF-8 encoding.
- When exporting, choose "CSV UTF-8" so Excel writes the marker it needs.
If that didn't work
These tools run in your browser. Your file is read and repaired on your own device and is never uploaded.
CSV Encoding Fixer
Repairs double-encoded UTF-8 line by line and leaves anything it can't repair safely exactly as it was. It reports how many lines were fixed and how many are still garbled.
Open CSV Encoding FixerCommon questions
Why do some characters show as ? or �?
Those are characters that were already lost when the file was first saved. No tool can restore a character that was replaced by a question mark.
Is my file uploaded anywhere?
No. The tool runs as a program inside your own browser, so the file is read and repaired on your device and never sent to a server.