CSV Repair Kit

Runs in your browser

CSV Encoding Fixer

Reinterpret legacy encodings and save a clean UTF-8 CSV.

Your files never leave your device.

Drop a CSV with encoding problems

CSV, TSV, or text. Processed locally — the file is never uploaded.

Try a sample:

What an encoding problem looks like

CSV has no required encoding. RFC 4180 assumes US-ASCII. Excel on Western Windows still writes \u201cANSI\u201d which is usually Windows-1252. macOS and Google Sheets prefer UTF-8. Opening one in the other produces mojibake: M\u00fcnchen becomes M\u00c3\u00bcnchen, or caf\u00e9 becomes caf\u00c3\u00a9.

How this fixer works

The file is read as bytes, not as pre-decoded text. You pick a character set. The browser\u2019s TextDecoder reinterpret those bytes. Download writes UTF-8, optionally with a BOM, which is the portable choice for new files.

Example

Windows-1252 bytes for Caf\u00e9,M\u00fcnchen become readable when decoded as Windows-1252:

name,city
Café,München

Limitations

If a file was converted twice, the original letters may be gone. This tool cannot restore them. Browser support for encodings such as Shift JIS and GBK depends on the TextDecoder implementation in your browser.

FAQ

Why does Café show up as Café?

Those three characters are the UTF-8 bytes for é displayed as Windows-1252. Choose UTF-8. If you see Café as Caf�, the file is not UTF-8 and you should try Windows-1252.

Should I keep a BOM?

Excel on Windows often needs a UTF-8 BOM to detect Unicode. Other tools prefer BOM-less UTF-8. Use the download checkbox.

Can every encoding be detected automatically?

No. Bytes 0x80–0xFF are valid in several encodings. Detection is a guess; always preview names and cities before downloading.

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