Exporting a CSV from Microsoft Excel

This article uses screenshots from Microsoft Excel 2011 Mac. If you are using Excel for Windows, or a different version of Office, the screenshots will differ, but hopefully the basics are the same. If not, let us know.

In your Excel Document, select File > Save As

In Excel, select "File" then "Save As" to export a CSV file

Select Comma Separated Values

Selecting "Comma Separated Values (.csv)" format in Excel save options menu

Select continue if you see this warning.

Excel warning about feature loss when saving; options to Cancel or Continue saving

And voilá: an exported CSV

Exported CSV file icon labeled "example.csv"

Select the file as your Import File

Now continue with the steps to Import Entries (see the Related Articles section below).

Choose and upload a CSV file to import for processing

Troubleshooting: Are your column headings or rows not displaying correctly?

CSV data import errors: top shows combined rows; bottom shows jumbled text in a mapping interface

If this happened to you, follow the steps below.

Save As "UTF-16 Unicode Text" instead

Instead of saving the file as "Comma Separated Values (.csv)", choose "UTF-16 Unicode Text (.txt)" from the Format dropdown in the Save As dialog.

Format options in Excel for exporting data as UTF-16 Unicode Text with encoding standards

Add "UTF-16" to the file name.

This will tell the plugin that the file is being encoded differently.

Save dialog showing filename "export-utf-16.txt" to specify text encoding

Upload the file, and the formatting should be fixed.

Uploaded CSV file with incorrect text encoding being mapped to form fields