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• • September 5, 2018 at 1:41 am #110272
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    I use ID CC2015 for Windows 10.

    so I have an Excel database with some words in Vietnamese and our bizarre accents, for example Bún bò Hu?. I need to merge this database to create an InDesign document, where the content of each Excel line is organised on 1 page.

    My problem is that I can’t get the Vietnamese characters to go through the CSV then merger:
    – the export from XLSX to CSV usually replaces some characters with “?”
    – saving the Excel as CSV UTF-8 creates a correct CSV file (without “?”) but InDesign doesn’t accept it, there’s an error message “The data source file has no records or is not supported”.

    Some strange fact to notice: if I open the CSV in Excel, all the characters display well. But in Notepad they are replaced by the “?”.

    So how can I export to a CSV file that shows all VN characters and is supported by InDesign ?
    I guess this problem can happen with other special characters or languages.

    Hope this is clear, thanks in advance for your help!

    Ern

  • September 5, 2018 at 7:48 am #110280
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Did you try UTF-16? See:

    Data Merge breaking some special characters

  • September 5, 2018 at 6:20 pm #110281
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Thanks David, that was the way to go! i just had a hard time to find UTF-16 on Windows (it seems available for Mac notepads only) . So I share the solution here:

    1. in Excel, the source data file should be Save As Type: CSV UTF-8 (the only CSV type that keeps the vietnamese characters for me)

    2. convert the CSV file to UTF-16 Little Endien – for example using this website https://www.fileformat.info/convert/text/utf2utf.htm

    The converted file can be used in InDesign merger and the Vietnamese characters are kept!

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