When registrations are entered into the system that include non-ASCII characters, such as French accents, Greek characters, etc., the reports may not always open correctly in Excel.
The problem is that Excel does not correctly interpret the encoding of the file, which prevents the file from opening properly. Use the following steps to instruct Excel which encoding to use when opening the file:
NOTE: The following procedure will only work if you are able to view and change the file extension of a file (Google this topic for more info: 'how to view file extensions ').
- From the Download dropdown, select 'Export to CSV' for the report you want.
- When prompted to Open or Save, click Save, and save the file to your Desktop.
- Go to your desktop and rename the file you just saved to end with '.txt', instead of '.csv'.
- Start Excel (Start/Programs/... Excel).
- From within Excel, click File, Open.
- In the file types drop-down, make sure to change from 'Excel File types (*.xls, etc)' to the type that includes "*.txt".
- Navigate to the '.txt' file saved to your desktop in step 3 and click Open.
- The Text Import Wizard should open in Excel. Choose the following settings in the wizard: Step 1 of 3
- Original data type: change to Delimited
- File Origin: Unicode(UTF-8). This might also be named '65001: Unicode (UTF-8)'
- Click 'Next'
Step 2 of 3
- Delimiters: Make sure only the 'Comma' delimiter is checked
- Text Qualifier: Choose the " delimiter.
- Click 'Finish'
After it has opened properly, click File, Save As, and change the ‘Save as type’ to '*.xls' to convert it to normal Excel format. The file should now open properly in Excel.
