How to Check the Encoding of a CSV File (Free Online Checker)
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Drop the file in the checker below, or open it in a text editor and read the status bar. A CSV is plain text, so Notepad and VS Code both show its encoding in the bottom-right corner. Excel doesn't show the encoding at all.
CSV encoding checker
Drop a CSV or text file to see its encoding, delimiter and line endings. The file is read in your browser and never uploaded.
No file handy? Try a sample:
Open it in Excel without garbled characters
Check the encoding in Notepad or VS Code
Notepad (Windows 10 and 11): open the CSV and look at the right end of the status bar. If you don't see a status bar, turn it on under View › Status bar.
VS Code: open the CSV. The encoding appears in the status bar, next to the line-ending setting (CRLF or LF). Click it to reopen or save the file in a different encoding.
Both screenshots show UTF-16 LE: 16-bit Unicode with the least significant byte first. That's what Excel writes when you save as Unicode Text.
Mac or Linux terminal: file -I data.csv (Mac) or file -i data.csv (Linux) prints the charset, for example charset=utf-8.
What the encoding names mean
| Encoding | What it is | Double-click in Excel |
|---|---|---|
| UTF-8 with BOM | Unicode, starts with the bytes EF BB BF. Excel's CSV UTF-8 format. | Opens correctly |
| UTF-8 (no BOM) | Unicode, the default for most web apps, databases and Google Sheets exports. | Accented and non-Latin characters break (é shows as é) |
| UTF-16 LE | Unicode, two bytes per character. Excel's Unicode Text format, usually tab-delimited. | Usually opens, often all in one column |
| Windows-1252 / ANSI | Older one-byte Western European code page. Excel's plain CSV (Comma delimited) format. | Opens correctly on Western European Windows, breaks elsewhere |
| ASCII | Only English letters, digits and basic symbols. | Opens correctly |
Open a CSV in Excel without garbled characters
Don't double-click. Import it instead and tell Excel the encoding:
- Go to Data › From Text/CSV and choose the file.
- Set File Origin to the encoding the checker found: 65001: Unicode (UTF-8) for UTF-8, 1200: Unicode for UTF-16 LE, 1252: Western European (Windows) for ANSI.
- Check that the preview looks right and the delimiter is correct, then click Load.
Save a CSV as UTF-8 from Excel
File › Save As › choose CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) (*.csv). This writes UTF-8 with a BOM, which Excel, Google Sheets and most other tools read correctly. Plain CSV (Comma delimited) saves as Windows-1252 and loses characters outside Western European languages.
Fix text that is already garbled
If you see sequences like é, ü or ’ in place of é, ü and ’, a UTF-8 file was read as Windows-1252. If that garbled text was then saved again, the damage is in the file itself, and the checker flags it as double-encoded. Go back to the original export if you can. Otherwise, undo one layer in VS Code on a copy of the file:
- Open it (it shows
é), click the encoding in the status bar, choose Save with Encoding › Western (Windows 1252). - Click the encoding again, choose Reopen with Encoding › UTF-8. The text should now read é.
- Check a few rows, then save.
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