Problem Overview
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You exported data into a CSV file, but some of that data is appearing as special characters.
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This problem can happen in programs like Excel because they use their own character encoding and sometimes misinterpret characters.
Solution Overview
Coursedog uses UTF-8 encoding when exporting to CSV, so the software you use to view the CSV (e.g. Excel) needs to be set to UTF-8 encoding to ensure non-alphanumeric characters appear as expected.
Examples
This problem can occur wherever special characters are used, including apostrophes and dashes (among others).
Blank/Empty Data
Overview
If a field is blank in Coursedog – in other words, if no value has been input for it – it will appear as a dash in both the user interface (UI) as well as in the exported file.
Viewing the CSV
If you view the CSV report in software that isn’t set to UTF-8 encoding, that software might replace the dash with other special characters, as shown below.
Apostrophes & Other Special Characters
Other characters, like apostrophes, might also be replaced with the wrong characters in CSV files.
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