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If I open a comma-delimited file ( .CSV extension ) with UTF16 encoding by double-clicking the file, Excel does not show it divided into its proper columns but puts everything in the first column.
If, however, I open a comma-delimited file with UTF8 encoding by double-clicking, Excel shows it properly.
In both cases the file has a proper BOM mark for its encoding.
If I open the same UTF16 file within Excel and respond to the dialogs asking me what kind of file it is, what encoding, and what is the delimiter, Excel shows it properly.
Microsoft happily touts UTF16 as the encoding Windows supports but evidently Excel does not support it as well as it supports UTF8. This has led others on my programming team to tout the superiority of creating UTF8 output files over UTF16 in our Windows application, even though we are dealing with wide character foreign language encodings.
Why does Excel behave the way it does, and is there any way to change it so that it automatically open a UTF16 CSV file properly ?
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
This is a late response, but hopefully will help others:
Excel does support UTF16 CSV Files. But only if the TABULATOR character is used as a delimiter,
then Excel separates the columns correctly when opening the .csv File.
This is a late response, but hopefully will help others:
Excel does support UTF16 CSV Files. But only if the TABULATOR character is used as a delimiter,
then Excel separates the columns correctly when opening the .csv File.
Thanks for the info! Confirmed in Excel 2016.
I have made some tests and confirmed that this problem goes a long way back to Excel 2007!
My test is simple - using PowerShell to generate the CSV file, so no more *external* program and Microsoft support can no longer blame on others!
Get-ADUser -filter * | Export-Csv -encoding "unicode" "C:\temp\aduser.csv"
That issue is really ridiculous! I call this a BUG because CSV stands for Comma Separated Values, not Tabulator separated values, come on!