Generate CSV for Excel via JavaScript with Unicode Characters

calendar_today Asked Aug 15, 2013
thumb_up 21 upvotes
history Updated April 16, 2026

Question posted 2013 · +9 upvotes

I am trying to generate a CSV file on the client side using javascript. I’ve followed the answer on this stackoverflow question. I have unicode characters in the content (Hebrew characters in my case).

The file generation succeeds, however when I open the file in Excel – all the unicode characters are shown as funny characters. ASCII characters (English and numbers) are presented well.

The weird thing is that if I open the file in notepad, the unicode characters show well. So I guess this has something to do with Excel and the way I’m saving the file.

Any ideas?

Accepted answer +21 upvotes

Following Jack Cole’s comment and this question, what fixed my problem was adding a BOM prefix (uFEFF) to the beginning of the file.

This is the working code:

var csvContent = "...csv content...";
var encodedUri = encodeURI(csvContent);
var link = document.createElement("a");
link.setAttribute("href", "data:text/csv;charset=utf-8,uFEFF" + encodedUri);
link.setAttribute("download","report.csv");
link.click();

Top excel Q&A (6)

+21 upvotes ranks this answer #26 out of 167 excel solutions on this site — top 16%.
excel