Skip to main content

Fix garbled text in a Go1 CSV export opened in Excel

Seeing random characters in your exported CSV? Fix the encoding when opening the file in Excel.

Updated today

If you open a CSV file exported from Go1 and see garbled or random characters, Excel hasn't detected the correct text encoding. The data in Go1 is fine — this is an Excel display issue you can fix when importing the file.

Fix the encoding in Excel (Windows)

Excel 2016 or later / Microsoft 365:

  1. Open a blank workbook in Excel

  2. Select the Data tab

  3. Select Get Data > From File > From Text/CSV

  4. Select your exported Go1 CSV file and select Import

  5. In the preview window, open the File origin dropdown and select 65001: Unicode (UTF-8)

  6. Select Load to open the file

Your data should now display correctly.

Older versions of Excel:

  1. Open a blank workbook in Excel

  2. Select the Data tab

  3. Select From Text

  4. Select your exported Go1 CSV file and select Import

  5. In the Text Import Wizard, set File origin to Unicode (UTF-8)

  6. Select Finish, then OK

Fix the encoding in Excel (Mac)

  1. Open a blank workbook in Excel

  2. Select the Data tab

  3. Select Get Data (Power Query) > From Text

  4. Select your exported Go1 CSV file and select Get Data

  5. Set File origin to Unicode (UTF-8)

  6. Select Load

Alternative: open the file in Google Sheets

Google Sheets handles UTF-8 encoding automatically. If you need a quick view of the data, upload the CSV to Google Drive and open it in Google Sheets — no encoding settings needed.

Did this answer your question?