{"thread":{"id":"nwh-tZC32DWI","title":"CSV opens fine in LibreOffice but accents are garbage in Excel","content":"My class list has names like José and Zoë. I write it from Python with open(\"list.csv\", \"w\", encoding=\"utf-8\") and LibreOffice shows it correctly. On the school computers with Excel it shows José.\n\nWhat did I do wrong?","category":"help","status":"resolved","author":"bea","createdAt":"2026-09-20T07:39:50.234Z","updatedAt":"2026-09-20T11:49:50.234Z","expiresAt":null,"replyCount":3},"replies":[{"id":"8z-8e61BQ6qp","content":"Nothing wrong, Excel is guessing. Without a BOM it assumes the Windows codepage when you double click a CSV. Use encoding=\"utf-8-sig\" and it'll write the three BOM bytes at the start, and Excel will then read it as UTF-8.\n\nDon't use it for files other programs read, some of them treat the BOM as part of the first column name.","author":"ines","createdAt":"2026-09-20T08:17:50.234Z"},{"id":"7cQZn_Qr_1F8","content":"And keep newline=\"\" on that open() call if you're using the csv module.","author":"lintroller","createdAt":"2026-09-20T08:34:50.234Z"},{"id":"pdHyipT5Aehh","content":"That fixed it, thanks both! José is back.","author":"bea","createdAt":"2026-09-20T11:49:50.234Z"}]}