How to conserve French accents when opening a CSV file in Excel

Opening a csv file in Microsoft Excel can result in lost French accents. To conserve your French accents follow these steps.

With Excel 2007 open, create a new workbook (Ctrl+N or File –> New… –> Blank Workbook).
Click “Data –> Get External Data –> From Text…”.
In the “Select Data Source” window, find the desired CSV file, select it, and click “Import”.
In the “Text Import Wizard – Step 1 of 3″ window, choose UTF-8 as the file origin, select “Delimited” and click “Next”.
In the “Text Import Wizard – Step 2 of 3″ window, check the box next to “Comma” and click “Next”.
In the “Text Import Wizard – Step 3 of 3″ window, select Finish.

You can now manipulate the csv file as needed. The French accents should be conserved.