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UTF-8 CSV file created with C# shows  characters in Excel

When a CSV file is generated using C# and opened in Microsoft Excel it displays  characters before special symbols e.g. £
In Notepad++ the hex value for  is: C2
So before writing the £ symbol to file, I have tried the following...
var test = "£200.00";
var replaced = test.Replace("\xC2", " ");
StreamWriter outputFile = File.CreateText("testoutput.csv"); // default UTF-8
outputFile.WriteLine(replaced);
outputFile.Close();
When opening the CSV file in Excel, I still see the "Â" character before the £ symbol (hex equivalent \xC2 \xA3); It made no difference.
Do I need to use a different encoding? or am I missing something?

Thank you #Evk and #Mortalier, your suggestions lead me to the right direction...
I needed to update my StreamWriter so it would explicitly include UTF-8 BOM at the beginning http://thinkinginsoftware.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/correctly-generate-csv-that-excel-can.html
So my code has changed from:
StreamWriter outputFile = File.CreateText("testoutput.csv"); // default UTF-8
To:
StreamWriter outputFile = new StreamWriter("testoutput.csv", false, new UTF8Encoding(true))
Or: Another solution I found here was to use a different encoding if you're only expecting latin characters...
http://theoldsewingfactory.com/2010/12/05/saving-csv-files-in-utf8-creates-a-characters-in-excel/
StreamWriter outputFile = new StreamWriter("testoutput.csv", false, Encoding.GetEncoding("Windows-1252"))
My system will most likely use latin & non-latin characters so I'm using the UTF-8 BOM solution.
Final code
var test = "£200.00";
StreamWriter outputFile = new StreamWriter("testoutput.csv", false, new UTF8Encoding(true))
outputFile.WriteLine(test);
outputFile.Close();

I tried your code and Excel does show AŁ in the cell.
Then I tried to open the csv with LibreOffice Clac. At first there too was AŁ, but
on import the program will ask you about encoding.
Once I chose UTF-8 the £ symbol was displayed correctly.
My guess is that in fact there is an issue with your encoding.
This might help with Excel https://superuser.com/questions/280603/how-to-set-character-encoding-when-opening-excel

C# .csv-file in WinForm with Ä, Ö, Ü [duplicate]

I'm using the code below to read a text file that contains foreign characters, the file is encoded ANSI and looks fine in notepad. The code below doesn't work, when the file values are read and shown in the datagrid the characters appear as squares, could there be another problem elsewhere?
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(inputFilePath, System.Text.Encoding.ANSI);
using (reader = File.OpenText(inputFilePath))
Thanks
Update 1: I have tried all encodings found under System.Text.Encoding. and all fail to show the file correctly.
Update 2: I've changed the file encoding (resaved the file) to unicode and used System.Text.Encoding.Unicode and it worked just fine. So why did notepad read it correctly? And why didn't System.Text.Encoding.Unicode read the ANSI file?

You may also try the Default encoding, which uses the current system's ANSI codepage.
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(inputFilePath, Encoding.Default, true)
When you try using the Notepad "Save As" menu with the original file, look at the encoding combo box. It will tell you which encoding notepad guessed is used by the file.
Also, if it is an ANSI file, the detectEncodingFromByteOrderMarks parameter will probably not help much.

I had the same problem and my solution was simple: instead of
Encoding.ASCII
use
Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1")
The answer was found here.
Edit: more solutions. This maybe more accurate one:
Encoding.GetEncoding(1252);
Also, in some cases this will work for you too if your OS default encoding matches file encoding:
Encoding.Default;

Yes, it could be with the actual encoding of the file, probably unicode. Try UTF-8 as that is the most common form of unicode encoding. Otherwise if the file ASCII then standard ASCII encoding should work.

Using Encoding.Unicode won't accurately decode an ANSI file in the same way that a JPEG decoder won't understand a GIF file.
I'm surprised that Encoding.Default didn't work for the ANSI file if it really was ANSI - if you ever find out exactly which code page Notepad was using, you could use Encoding.GetEncoding(int).
In general, where possible I'd recommend using UTF-8.

Try a different encoding such as Encoding.UTF8. You can also try letting StreamReader find the encoding itself:
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(inputFilePath, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8, true)
Edit: Just saw your update. Try letting StreamReader do the guessing.

For swedish Å Ä Ö the only solution form the ones above working was:
Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1")
Hopefully this will save someone time.

File.OpenText() always uses an UTF-8 StreamReader implicitly. Create your own StreamReader
instance instead and specify the desired encoding.
like
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(#"C:\test.txt", Encoding.Default)
{
// ...
}

I solved my problem of reading portuguese characters, changing the source file on notepad++.
C#
var url = System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(#"~/Content/data.json");
string s = string.Empty;
using (System.IO.StreamReader sr = new System.IO.StreamReader(url, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8,true))
{
s = sr.ReadToEnd();
}

I'm also reading an exported file which contains french and German languages. I used Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1"), true which worked out without any challenges.

for Arabic, I used Encoding.GetEncoding(1256). it is working good.

I had a similar problem with ProcessStartInfo and the property StandardOutputEncoding. I set it for German language console output to code page 850. This way I could read the output like ausführen instead of ausf�hren.

Text File Wrong Encoding issue

I have a text file that contains a strange encoded characters, the original characters of the file was Arabic characters.
As a sample: the file contains this string ÝíæáÇ ãÍÝæÑ which equivalent to فيولا محفور
other some examples here:
ÈÇÑíÜÜÜÜÜÒ = باريـــــز
ÏíäÇ ÔÇÌ = دينا شاج
ßíÑãÇäì ãÍÝæÑ = كيرمانى محفور
ÇäÌì ÈÇáÝæã ãßãáÇÊ = انجى بالفوم مكملات
ÓÈÔíÇá ÑæíÇá 35 ãáã = سبشيال رويال 35 ملم
Is there is any way to revert back the file content to its original Arabic characters?
Note: I am using C# programming language.

I'm not too familiar with Arabic encodings, but I assume that your text file is encoded using a Windows-1256 code page.
So you need to specify this codepage when reading the file:
var text = File.ReadAllText(pathToFile, Encoding.GetEncoding(1256));

Problems with strings in the CSV file

I have an application that reads information from a CSV file to write it to the database. But some characters (example: º ç) are appearing problems Gravalos base. Anyone know how to fix this problem?
Thank you.
I'm using these lines of code to read the information from the CSV file:
string directory = #"C:\test.csv";
StreamReader stream = new StreamReader(directory);
string line = "";
line = stream.ReadLine();
string[] column = line.Split(';');

StreamReader defaults to UTF8 encoding and your file is in a different encoding. Try specifying it like this...
var encoding = Encoding.UTF16;
StreamReader stream = new StreamReader(directory, encoding);
Note that you need to know what encoding the file is in to properly read it... I'm just guessing that it might be UTF16 but obviously I can't know what it is.

You should specify the right encoding when reading the file. The default is UTF-8. Your file is probably encoded with a different encoding.

This is most likely related to the Encoding that is used when reading the file. By default, UTF8 is assumed as the Encoding. In order to read the file correctly, you need to specify the right encoding, e.g.:
string directory = #"C:\test.csv";
using(StreamReader stream = new StreamReader(directory, Encoding.ASCII))
{
string line = "";
line = stream.ReadLine();
string[] column = line.Split(';');
}
You can try the following encodings (see this link for a complete list):
Encoding.Default for ANSI encoding based in the current windows code page.
Encoding.ASCII for ASCII encoding.
Encoding.UTF* for different Unicode encodings.
Please note that I enclosed the StreamReader in a using block so that it is disposed when it is not needed anymore.

Irregular character/text encoding issue with writing back to file

I'm using this function to read text lines from a file:
string[] postFileLines = System.IO.File.ReadAllLines(pstPathTextBox.Text);
Inserting a few additional lines at strategic spots, then writing the text lines back to a file with:
TextWriter textW = new StreamWriter(filePath);
for (int i = 0; i < linesToWrite.Count; i++)
{
textW.WriteLine(linesToWrite[i]);
}
textW.Close();
This works perfectly well until the text file I am reading in contains an international or special character. When writing back to the file, I don't get the same character - it is a box.
Ex:
Before = W:\Contrat à faire aujourdhui\ `
After = W:\Contrat � faire aujourdhui\ `
This webpage is portraying it as a question mark, but in the text file it's a rect white box.
Is there a way to include the correct encoding in my application to be able to handle these characters? Or, if not, throw a warning saying it was not able to properly write given line?

Add encondig like this:
File.ReadAllLines(path, Encoding.UTF8);
and
new StreamWriter(filePath, Encoding.UTF8);
Hope it helps.

use This , works for me
string txt = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(inpPath, Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1"));

You can try UTF encoding while writing to the file as well,
textW.WriteLine(linesToWrite[i],Encoding.UTF8);

You may be need to write Single-byte Character Sets
Using Encoding.GetEncodings() you can easily get all possible encoding. ("DOS" encoding are System.Text.SBCSCodePageEncoding)
In your case you may need to use
File.ReadAllLines(path, Encoding.GetEncoding("IBM850"));
and
new StreamWriter(filePath, Encoding.GetEncoding("IBM850"));
Bonne journée! ;)