Table of Contents
Problem Overview
Solution Overview
Examples
Related Articles
Problem Overview
You exported data into a CSV file, but some of that data is appearing as special characters.
This problem can happen in programs like Excel because they use their own character encoding and sometimes misinterpret characters.
Solution Overview
Coursedog uses UTF-8 encoding when exporting to CSV, so the software you use to view the CSV (e.g. Excel) needs to be set to UTF-8 encoding to ensure non-alphanumeric characters appear as expected.
Examples
This problem can occur wherever special characters are used, including apostrophes and dashes (among others).
Blank/Empty Data
Overview
If a field is blank in Coursedog – in other words, if no value has been input for it – it will appear as a dash in both the user interface (UI) as well as in the exported file.
Viewing the CSV
If you view the CSV report in software that isn’t set to UTF-8 encoding, that software might replace the dash with other special characters, as shown below.
Apostrophes & Other Special Characters
Other characters, like apostrophes, might also be replaced with the wrong characters in CSV files.
