How can I output a UTF-8 CSV in PHP that Excel will read properly?

Question

I\'ve got this very simple thing that just outputs some stuff in CSV format, but it\'s got to be UTF-8. I open this file in TextEdit or TextMate or Dreamweaver and it displa

Answer 1

For me none of the solution above worked. Below is what i did to resolve the issue: modify the value using this function in the PHP code:

$value = utf8_encode($value);

This output values properly in an excel sheet.

Answer 2

#output a UTF-8 CSV in PHP that Excel will read properly.

//Use tab as field separator   
$sep  = "\t";  
$eol  = "\n";    
$fputcsv  =  count($headings) ? '"'. implode('"'.$sep.'"', $headings).'"'.$eol : '';

Answer 3

I'm on Mac, in my case I just had to specify the separator with "sep=;\n" and encode the file in UTF-16LE like this:

$data = "sep=;\n" .mb_convert_encoding($data, 'UTF-16LE', 'UTF-8');

Answer 4

I have the same (or similar) problem.

In my case, if I add a BOM to the output, it works:

header('Content-Encoding: UTF-8');
header('Content-type: text/csv; charset=UTF-8');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=Customers_Export.csv');
echo "\xEF\xBB\xBF"; // UTF-8 BOM

I believe this is a pretty ugly hack, but it worked for me, at least for Excel 2007 Windows. Not sure it'll work on Mac.

Answer 5

I was having the same issue and it was solved like below:

    header('Content-Encoding: UTF-8');
    header('Content-Type: text/csv; charset=utf-8' );
    header(sprintf( 'Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=my-csv-%s.csv', date( 'dmY-His' ) ) );
    header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
    header('Expires: 0');
    header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
    header('Pragma: public');

    $df = fopen( 'php://output', 'w' );

    //This line is important:
    fputs( $df, "\xEF\xBB\xBF" ); // UTF-8 BOM !!!!!

    foreach ( $rows as $row ) {
        fputcsv( $df, $row );
    }
    fclose($df);
    exit();

Answer 6

The CSV File musst include a Byte Order Mark.

Or as suggested and workaround just echo it with the HTTP body