How to Fix CSV Encoding Issues in Excel: Two Simple Methods

Introduction

A fan asked why a CSV file shows unreadable characters when opened directly in Excel. The problem is caused by mismatched character encodings, and the solution is to ensure the file is read as UTF‑8.

Method 1: Open with Notepad++

Since a CSV is a plain‑text file, you can open it in Notepad++ and verify it is saved with UTF‑8 encoding. If your web‑scraping script writes the file using UTF‑8, the content will display correctly in Notepad++.

f = open('filename.csv', mode='a', encoding="utf-8")
csvwriter = csv.writer(f)

When the file is saved in UTF‑8, Notepad++ shows the correct characters (the example uses Korean and Japanese text, which is not garbled).

Method 2: Import via Excel

Use Excel’s built‑in import wizard:

Open Excel and click Data → From Text/CSV .

Select the CSV file; a preview window appears.

Set the file’s original format to UTF‑8 , keep the delimiter as a comma, and let Excel detect data types.

Click Load and wait for the data to appear.

After loading, the characters display correctly, and you can further save the file as an Excel workbook or continue processing the data.

Conclusion

The article demonstrates two effective ways to resolve CSV encoding problems in Excel, helping beginners overcome a common obstacle when working with data scraped by Python.