We have a web app that exports CSV files containing foreign characters with UTF-8, no BOM. Both Windows and Mac users get garbage characters in Excel. I tried converting to UTF-8 with BOM; Excel/Win is fine with it, Excel/Mac shows gibberish. I'm using Excel 2003/Win, Excel 2011/Mac. Here's all the encodings I tried:
Encoding BOM Win Mac
-------- --- ---------------------------- ------------
utf-8 -- scrambled scrambled
utf-8 BOM WORKS scrambled
utf-16 -- file not recognized file not recognized
utf-16 BOM file not recognized Chinese gibberish
utf-16LE -- file not recognized file not recognized
utf-16LE BOM characters OK, same as Win
row data all in first field
The best one is UTF-16LE with BOM, but the CSV is not recognized as such. The field separator is comma, but semicolon doesn't change things.
Is there any encoding that works in both worlds?
The lowdown is: There is no solution. Excel 2011/Mac cannot correctly interpret a CSV file containing umlauts and diacritical marks no matter what encoding or hoop jumping you do. I'd be glad to hear someone tell me different!