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CSV reference based on official sources

CSV encoding compatibility matrix

See what the official documentation says about CSV encodings in Excel, Power Query / Power BI, Tableau, BigQuery and Google Sheets.

Fields not confirmed by the cited official source are marked Unknown, not guessed. Requirements can change; check the linked source before importing.

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EncodingExcelPower Query / Power BITableauBigQuery CSV loadGoogle Sheets IMPORTDATA
UTF-8CautionCautionSupportedRecommendedUnknown
UTF-8 BOMRecommendedRecommendedSupportedCautionUnknown
Shift_JIS / CP932UnknownUnknownUnknownNot supportedUnknown
CP949UnknownUnknownUnknownNot supportedUnknown
EUC-KRUnknownUnknownUnknownNot supportedUnknown
Big5UnknownUnknownUnknownNot supportedUnknown
GB18030 / GBKUnknownUnknownUnknownNot supportedUnknown
Windows-1252UnknownUnknownSupportedNot supportedUnknown
ISO-8859-1UnknownUnknownUnknownSupportedUnknown

Behavior can vary by OS, Excel version, locale and connection method.

Status definitions

Recommended
Explicitly recommended by the official source, or the safest documented choice.
Supported
The official source confirms that it can be read.
Caution
Requires attention to a BOM, setting, conversion or other condition.
Not supported
Not included in the official list of supported encodings.
Unknown
The cited official documentation does not establish support.

Prepare the CSV before importing

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Sources

  1. Microsoft Support — Opening CSV UTF-8 files correctly in Excel
  2. Microsoft Learn — Power Query Text/CSV connector
  3. Tableau Help — Text File
  4. Google Cloud — Load CSV data from Cloud Storage
  5. Google Docs Editors Help — IMPORTDATA