Save Excel Sheet as a CSV file with UTF-8 encoding

In Excel, you can save a spreadsheet as a CSV file directly from the Excel menu. Saving it in Excel 2016, 2019, 2021, and 365 is different from the 2013 and older versions, as they don’t offer such an option from the menu.

Excel sheet to CSV conversion

If you are saving a CSV file, you need to know that you can only save a single Excel sheet to a CSV file; the rest of them are going to be discarded. There is no formatting in the CSV file, so all tables, color fills, etc. will also be removed.

This is the example we are going to use – a single sheet with a few names on it.

Excel 2016 and newer

1. Navigate to File >> Save As
2. Click Browse and select a place, where you want to save a file
3. From the Save as type dropdown list and choose: CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited)(*.csv)
4. Click Save

If you open a file with the notepad, it consists of text separated by delimiters (commas). In the bottom-right corner, there is information about encoding: UTF-8.

You can also find information about encoding when you click File >> Save As in a notepad.

Excel 2013 and older

The older versions of Excel don’t have the option to save the file with UTF-8 encoding. But it doesn’t mean you can’t do it. You can, just not inside Excel.

These are the steps to save the Excel sheet as CSV and change the encoding to UTF-8.

1. Save a sheet as the standard CSV file
2. Right-click the file and open it with a notepad
3. Click File >> Save As
4. Choose the UTF-8 encoding
5. Click Save