How to Create UTF-8 CSV File from an Excel Spreadsheet?

Saving a CSV file from Excel seems simple until your special characters come out garbled on the other end. Accented letters, non-Latin alphabets, and symbols often appear as question marks or garbage characters because Excel defaults to a Windows encoding (CP1252 or ANSI) instead of UTF-8.

UTF-8 is the universal encoding standard. It supports every character in every language. When you need your CSV to work correctly in every system, UTF-8 is the right choice.

Why UTF-8 Encoding Matters

Most modern software expects CSV files to use UTF-8 encoding. This includes:

• Contact management apps and CRMs that import CSV contact lists
• Email marketing platforms like Mailchimp and Klaviyo
• Databases and data import tools
• Web applications that process uploaded CSV files
• Any system where the data contains non-English characters

When you save a regular CSV from Excel with the default encoding, any characters outside the basic ASCII range (accented letters like é, ñ, Chinese characters, Arabic text) may be corrupted. If your contact list has names like García or Müller, saving as standard CSV will likely garble those names on systems that expect UTF-8.

UTF-8 encoding uses a BOM (Byte Order Mark) to signal the encoding. Some systems need the BOM, others work better without it. The methods below cover both scenarios.

Method 1: Save As CSV UTF-8 (Excel 2016+)

If you have Excel 2016, Excel 2019, Excel 2021, or Microsoft 365, this is the fastest method.

Step 1: Open Your Excel File

Open the spreadsheet you want to save as CSV UTF-8.

Step 2: Click File Then Save As

Click the File menu, then choose Save As. Select Browse to choose the save location.

Step 3: Choose CSV UTF-8 from the Format List

In the Save As dialog, click the file type dropdown. Look for “CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) (.csv)” in the list. This option appears in Excel 2016 and later. Select it and click Save.

Click Yes if Excel shows a warning about features that won’t be saved in CSV format. This warning is normal and safe to dismiss.

Your file is now saved as a UTF-8 encoded CSV with a BOM. This works with most applications including Outlook, Google Contacts, and most CRMs.

Method 2: Use Web Options (All Excel Versions)

If you have Excel 2007, 2010, or 2013 which lack the “CSV UTF-8” option, use the Web Options method to set encoding before saving.

Step 1: Open Advanced Save Options

In the Save As dialog, click Tools (bottom-left area near the Save button), then select Web Options from the dropdown menu.

Step 2: Set Encoding to UTF-8

In the Web Options dialog, click the Encoding tab. In the “Save this document as” dropdown, select Unicode (UTF-8). Click OK.

Step 3: Save as CSV

Back in the Save As dialog, select CSV (Comma delimited) as the file type and click Save. The file will be saved with UTF-8 encoding because you set it in Web Options.

Method 3: Use Notepad

If the Web Options method doesn’t work in your Excel version, use Notepad as an intermediary:

1. Save the file from Excel as a regular CSV (Comma delimited)
2. Open the resulting CSV file in Notepad (right-click the file, choose Open With, select Notepad)
3. Click File then Save As in Notepad
4. Change the Encoding dropdown at the bottom of the dialog from “ANSI” to “UTF-8”
5. Click Save (this overwrites the file with UTF-8 encoding)

This method works with any version of Excel and any version of Windows. It takes about 1 minute extra compared to the direct Excel methods.

Bonus: Convert CSV to vCard

If you’ve created a CSV contact list and want to convert it to vCard (VCF) format for importing into a phone or contact management app, the vCard Converter handles CSV to vCard conversion and supports UTF-8 encoded CSV files as input.

Limitations to Know

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the difference between UTF-8 and UTF-8 with BOM?

BOM stands for Byte Order Mark. It’s a few invisible bytes at the start of the file that tell software what encoding was used. UTF-8 with BOM is useful for Windows applications like Excel which use the BOM to detect encoding correctly. UTF-8 without BOM is better for web applications and Linux-based systems that don’t need the BOM and may misinterpret it as part of the data.

Why does Excel default to ANSI encoding instead of UTF-8?

Excel’s default CSV encoding is based on the system locale setting, which on most Windows machines is Windows-1252 (often called ANSI). This was the standard before UTF-8 became universal. Microsoft added the explicit “CSV UTF-8” option in Excel 2016 to address the widespread issue with international characters.

How do I know if my CSV file is actually UTF-8 encoded?

Open the CSV file in Notepad and check the encoding shown in the bottom-right of the Save As dialog. It will say “UTF-8” or “UTF-8 with BOM” for UTF-8 files and “ANSI” for Windows-1252 files. Alternatively, open the file in a text editor like Notepad++ which shows the encoding clearly in the status bar at the bottom of the window.

Will the UTF-8 CSV work with Google Contacts import?

Yes. Google Contacts accepts UTF-8 CSV files for contact import. Make sure the CSV column headers match Google’s expected field names (First Name, Last Name, E-mail Address, etc.) for successful import. Google ignores any BOM in the file.

Can I batch convert multiple Excel files to UTF-8 CSV?

The manual methods described here work on one file at a time. For batch conversion of multiple Excel files to UTF-8 CSV, you’d need a scripted approach using PowerShell or a macro. For most users, the Save As method is fast enough for individual files.

What if my CSV has data in multiple languages?

UTF-8 is the correct choice for multilingual data. It supports every character in every language including Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and more. The methods in this guide produce UTF-8 files that handle all of these character sets correctly.