How do I export an Excel file with Chinese characters to a CSV?

Question

I having a Excel document with a data table containing Chinese characters. I am trying to export this Excel spreadsheet to a CSV file for importing into a MySQL database.

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Answer 1

As far as I know Excel doesn't save CSV files in any Unicode encoding. I have had similar issues recently trying to export a file as CSV with the £ symbol. I had the benefit of being able to use another tool altogether.

My version of Excel 2010 can export in Unicode format File > Save As > Unicode Text (.txt), but the output is a tab-delimited, UCS-2 encoded file. I don't know MySQL at all but a brief look at the specifications and it appears to handle tab delimited imports and UCS-2. It may be worth trying this output.

Edit: Additionally, you could always open this Unicode output in Notepad++ convert it to UTF-8 Encoding > Convert to UTF-8 without BOM And possibly replace all tab chars with commas too (Use the Replace dialogue in Extended Search mode, \t in the Find box and , in the Replace box.)