Fix garbled characters in CSV files caused by encoding mismatches. Detects the source encoding, converts to UTF-8, and fixes mojibake — the corrupted text you get when encoding is wrong.
Open CSV Encoding Fixer → free, no sign-inCSV files exported from Excel, legacy databases, or international systems often arrive with garbled characters — accented letters become ’, smart quotes become “, and Japanese or Arabic text turns to question marks. This is mojibake, caused by a mismatch between the file's actual encoding and the encoding used to read it. This tool detects the likely encoding, lets you pick the correct one, and converts the file to clean UTF-8.
| Category | Data Tools |
| Cost | Free |
| Sign-in required | No |
| Files uploaded | Never — runs in your browser |
| Published | May 11, 2026 |
What is mojibake?
Mojibake is garbled text that appears when a file encoded in one character set is read using a different one. For example, é (Windows-1252) read as UTF-8 becomes é.
Why does Excel create encoding problems?
Excel on Windows defaults to Windows-1252 (or the system locale) rather than UTF-8 when saving CSV. Recipients using UTF-8 see garbled characters.
Can this fix Chinese or Japanese text?
Yes — the tool supports Shift-JIS for Japanese and GB2312/GBK for Simplified Chinese.
What if auto-detection is wrong?
Use the manual encoding selector to try the likely encoding. Windows-1252 and Latin-1 are the most common for European-language files.
Is this free?
Yes — free with no sign-in.
Free, instant, no sign-in required. Opens directly in your browser.
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