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.

However, when I save the Excel document as a CSV file, Notepad displays the resulting CSV file's Chinese characters as question marks. Importing into MySQL preserves the question marks, completely ignoring what the original Chinese characters are.

I'm suspecting this may have to do with using Excel with UTF-8 encoding. Thanks for your help!

user_11218701 · Answer

For some people this solution may work: https://support.geekseller.com/knowledgebase/utf-8/

When saving csv, go to lower right Tools > Web Options > Encoding > Unicode (UTF-8)

Or this SO answer: just use Google Sheets to save csv as unicode: Excel to CSV with UTF8 encoding

user_8410477 · Answer

You should save csv file with:

df.to_csv(file_name, encoding = 'utf_8_sig')

instead of:

df.to_csv(file_name, encoding = 'utf-8')

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

6 Answers