Why does exported data show as gibberish in HubSpot Excel files?

[LPhillips0]

The data in Hubspot displays correctly as it's usually copied and pasted in.  However when we download the data out of Hubspot the text is then corupted and appears as gibberish. 

Downloaded Excel file - University of Tübingen

Within Hubspot - University of Tübingen

How can we get the exported data out without it coming out as gibberish? 

[LPhillips0]

So I have followed your instructions to get the data from Hubspot, into excel in a readable format but excel imports it as a table which means that I can't filter the data in excel.  Is there something else that I need to do to get it in a format that can be edited? 

[karstenkoehler]

@LPhillips0 what do you mean when you say it's imported as a table and you can't edit it? If you're stuck, you can always copy all if the data into another worksheet without formatting.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @LPhillips0,

This is not an issue of corrupted data / gibberish, it comes down to encoding. If I'm not mistaken, HubSpot is exporting in UTF-8 encoding (which correctly handles special characters like "ü"), but Excel is apparently opening it with different encoding.

When you open a CSV file, do it through the Data item in the Excel ribbon (Get data - From File - From Text/CSV). In the import window, you should be able to change the encoding to 65001: Unicode (UTF-8).

Best regards!