Why are there changes in characters/symbols when exporting data to CSV | XM Community
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Michael_Cooksey
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1 month ago
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Why are there changes in characters/symbols when exporting data to CSV

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  • ash123
  • Level 5 ●●●●●
  • 276 replies

When exporting data from the Data & Analysis tab into an Excel or CSV file, certain symbols or characters do not show up correctly in the Excel file. For example, any apostrophes in respondents’ text entry comments show up as “’” instead of an apostrophe. If a respondent wrote “aren’t,” it will display as “aren’t” in the CSV file. In Qualtrics, it does show up correctly, just not when exporting the data to Excel formatting. 

Is anyone else having this issue? Or does anyone know how to solve this problem?

Best answer by Guruparan

Do not open the CSV directly. Open a blank Excel file, go to Data → From Text/CSV, and select the exported file from the Data and Analysis tab. On the next page, use the origin as “UTF 8” and then delimiter, then load the data.

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5 replies

Deepak
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  • Deepak
  • 1553 replies
  • October 5, 2023

@ash123 

I believe it's an encoding issue try saving it as CSV UTF-8  encoded file.

Hope it helps!

JoseS
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  • JoseS
    JoseS
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    Nripendra
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  • Nripendra
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  • 3 replies
  • October 5, 2023

Please select delimiter used in your CSV file (usually a comma), and choose the appropriate encoding (UTF-8 or the one you used when exporting from Qualtrics). 

Nripendra Pratap
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  • Guruparan
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  • 15 replies
  • Answer
  • October 6, 2023

Do not open the CSV directly. Open a blank Excel file, go to Data → From Text/CSV, and select the exported file from the Data and Analysis tab. On the next page, use the origin as “UTF 8” and then delimiter, then load the data.

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  • A
    ash123
TomG
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  • TomG
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  • 5937 replies
  • October 6, 2023

The reason for this is that the downloaded file doesn’t include a UTF-8 BOM (Bit Order Mask). A BOM is the the first few bits of a file that indicate the encoding. We use Notepad++ (free download) to add the UTF-8 BOM (open, set encoding, save - it takes about 5 seconds).

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  • ash123
  • Author
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  • 276 replies
  • October 6, 2023

Thanks everyone! I had trouble converting the file to UTF-8 at first, but @Guruparan’s steps helped!

JoseS
1 person likes this
  • JoseS
    JoseS

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