Viewing Zencity Engage Result Exports in Excel

Zencity Engage is a multilingual platform that stores the submissions and responses from participants in the UTF-8 (Unicode) characterset.  Exporting results of an engagement will provide administrators with a CSV file using this encoding.

While spreadsheet programs like Google Sheets and Apple's Numbers are able to recognize this encoding and display the results in an expected manner, Microsoft Excel tends to default to expecting an ANSI character set, which results in issues such as apostrophes displaying as '’'.  This means that when simply opening the file from Windows Explorer / Finder or from an email program, Excel won't ask/clarify, but simply open the file assuming ANSI encoding

Luckily, Excel has a way around this.  While different versions of Excel may function slightly differently, here are the basic steps to the successful import of a UTF-8 (ISO 65001) encoded CSV in Excel.

1. Ensure that you've already exported the file from your Zencity Engage, downloaded the file from your email program, and unzipped it.

2. Do not simply open the file.  Instead, note where it has been saved/unzipped, and Launch Excel, choosing the New / Blank Workbook option

3.  Display the data menu, and choose the 'From Text/CSV' or 'From Text' option.

4. Select the file from the location where you downloaded and unzipped it.

5. When given a File Origin or Encoding option, look for ISO / 65001 and/or Unicode (UTF-8).  The delimiter should be set to 'Comma'

6.  Press Load, and find that your export data should be imported successfully.