How to Fix Garbled Text in Excel
Repair the mangled accents and symbols — café, ’, ü — you get when a CSV is opened with the wrong character set. It's called mojibake.
Last updated: August 2026
| Garbled | Fixed | |
|---|---|---|
| café | → | café |
| it’s | → | it's |
| Zürich | → | Zürich |
Why it happens
The file is saved as UTF-8, but Excel opened it as a different encoding (often Windows-1252). Each accented character is stored as two bytes, and the wrong encoding shows those two bytes as two visible junk characters. Genuine data isn't lost — it's just being displayed wrong.
Method 1 — Re-import with the correct encoding (best fix)
- Delete the garbled data. Don't double-click the CSV — instead go to Data → From Text/CSV.
- In the import dialog, set File Origin to 65001: Unicode (UTF-8).
- Preview the accents to confirm they look right, then Load.
This is the cleanest fix — but only if you still have the original file and can re-import.
The 1-click way — Tellsheet's Fix Mojibake
Can't re-import? Select the garbled range and click Fix Mojibake. Tellsheet reverses the bad byte round-trip so café becomes café and ’ becomes an apostrophe — while leaving genuine text untouched, with a preview first. Fix Mojibake is one of Tellsheet's free tools.
Frequently asked questions
Why does Excel show café as café?
The file is UTF-8 but Excel opened it as another encoding (like Windows-1252), so each accented character shows as two junk characters. That's mojibake.
How do I import a CSV so accents don't break?
Use Data → From Text/CSV (not a double-click) and set File Origin to 65001: Unicode (UTF-8) in the dialog.
Can I fix text that's already garbled in my sheet?
Yes — Tellsheet's Fix Mojibake repairs the mangled cells in place and leaves genuine text alone, with a preview.
Related Excel guides
Fix garbled text in one click
Fix Mojibake is free in Tellsheet — install it and repair encoding junk, trim spaces, and clean data inside Excel.
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