Fix garbled characters and CSV encoding
Seeing “Café” instead of “Café”, or “don’t” instead of “don’t”? The file was saved in one encoding and opened in another. Upload it here: SpreadsheetFix detects the file’s encoding, repairs the garbled text, and gives you back clean UTF-8.
Free up to 5,000 rows · No sign-up · Nothing uploaded
Drag & drop your file
or click to browse — CSV, TSV, XLSX up to 50MB
Before and after
name,city,note José Özil,München,don’t call Zoë Smith,Zürich,€50 credit
name,city,note José Özil,München,don’t call Zoë Smith,Zürich,€50 credit
How it works
- 1
Upload the CSV. SpreadsheetFix reads the raw bytes and detects UTF-8, UTF-8 with BOM, UTF-16 or Windows-1252.
- 2
Cells containing mojibake — text that was double-decoded — are repaired back to the original characters, including files that were mis-saved twice.
- 3
Download the result as UTF-8, the encoding every modern tool expects.
What causes “é” in a CSV
The character é takes two bytes in UTF-8. When software reads those bytes as Windows-1252 or Latin-1, each byte becomes its own character, and é turns into é. If that broken text is saved and opened the same wrong way again, it gets worse: é. SpreadsheetFix reverses this process exactly instead of guessing with find-and-replace.
Two different problems, both handled
Sometimes the file itself is in an old encoding such as Windows-1252, which is common for exports from older Windows software. SpreadsheetFix detects that from the bytes and decodes it correctly. Other times the text inside the file is already garbled; the Fix Encoding rule repairs those cells. Text that is already correct is never changed.
Safe by design
A cell is only changed when the repair is a perfect round-trip: the garbled text must be exactly what UTF-8 looks like when misread. Genuine accented words like “Zürich” or “naïve” are left as they are.
Frequently asked questions
How do I fix encoding in a CSV file?
Upload it above. SpreadsheetFix detects the encoding automatically, repairs garbled characters, and lets you download a clean UTF-8 CSV.
How do I convert a CSV from ANSI / Windows-1252 to UTF-8?
Upload the file. If its bytes aren’t valid UTF-8, SpreadsheetFix decodes it as Windows-1252, and every download is UTF-8.
Why does my CSV show é instead of é?
The file was written as UTF-8 but read as Windows-1252 or Latin-1 somewhere along the way. SpreadsheetFix’s Fix Encoding rule reverses that misreading.
Will it change text that is already correct?
No. A cell is only modified when it matches the exact pattern of misdecoded UTF-8, and every change appears in the change log.
Is encoding repair free?
Yes, for files up to 5,000 rows. Pro supports files up to 500,000 rows.
Cleaning bigger files every week?
Pro cleans up to 500,000 rows per file, unlocks all 18 rules, exports to Excel and removes the watermark.
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