Export users with special characters to Excel

This article describes how to open an exported list of users in Excel and properly display special characters, such as umlauts and accents used in people's names.

When you export a .csv file of users from xMatters and open it directly in Excel, entries with special characters will be displayed incorrectly. For example, Adélaïde Mühlhäuser will be displayed as Adélaïde Mühlhäuser.

This occurs because Excel does not properly detect UTF-8 encoded .csv files, which is the format exported by xMatters. To display these characters correctly, you must import the file into Excel and manually select UTF-8 encoding as the file origin.

To properly display special characters in the User Export file in Excel:

1. Export your list of users from xMatters. See Manage Users for more information about exporting a list of users.
2. Open a new blank workbook in Excel.
3. Select to import the user export .csv file. (Go to Data Tab and click From Text button)
4. Select the file you would like to load in excel.
5. In the import wizard, select Unicode (UTF-8) as the file origin:

5. Continue the import process, being sure to delimit the file by the 'Comma' character.

Note: If you use the User Export file to upload users with special characters in their names into xMatters, you must save the file in Excel with UTF-8 encoding. This option is available in the Save As dialog, by selecting: Tools > Web Options > Encoding > Save this document as: Unicode (UTF-8).

xMatters internal reference: DTN-5162, DTN-5296, SUP-13130