How to convert CSV to XLS

Importing/exporting contacts and they are in a file with incorrect diacritics? Is the exported file displaying incorrectly?

Marek Szwed avatar
Written by Marek Szwed
Updated over a week ago

When exporting data, such as exporting your contacts or reports from Ecomail, the data comes in the CSV format. The data in this format is separated by a comma, semicolon, space, or a different character. When opening a CSV file in excel, it is pretty much impossible to edit or work with the data, as all the data loads into one column.

You can, however, convert the file to XLS via Excel and split the information into columns. This way you will have your names, email addresses and other data separated into columns. You can then simply delete some of the columns or perhaps add new ones.

How to do it:

Open a new blank Excel file, click on Data -> Get external data -> From text. Then select the file you want to convert.

Once you have selected the file, you still need to make the following settings. After importing, select Data type: Delimited - Characters such as commas or tabs separate each field.

You can also select the File origin - if your export uses special characters or diacritics, use Unicode (UTF-8). Then click on Next.

In the second step, choose the type of delimiter according to how the data is separated in the CSV file. The default delimiter for Ecomail exports is a comma.

You can see you have selected the correct delimiter if the data separates into columns.

Here you can see that no delimiter is set - the data is a mess:

Here we have selected a comma as a delimiter - the data sorted into columns:

In the last step, you don't really have to select anything. If you want to format the way your data is shown in your excel file, you can select a type of field for each column. To complete the action, click on Finish.

After clicking finish, your data should be sorted out into columns:

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