2088050 - Data Imports: Special Characters in the User Data File - Platform

• How do we remove special characters from the User Data File? 
• We see special characters in the CSV for Employee Export.
• Change the encoding to UTF-8 and try again. 
• Reason for such discrepancy/data issue is excel does not handle UTF-8 very well and hence cannot display with correct encoding. Open the file in notepad++, and there should be no special characters. 
• Common issues customer face is: 
• When the user is using "Western Characters", we are losing some characters (ě, ř or ć) which are replaced by "?" but the others works fine (é, à) 
• When the user is using "Unicode UTF-8", we are losing others characters (é,è,ô,ï,ê,à,ù) which are replaced by "é". 

SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite

Export the file with Character Encoding: Unicode (UTF-8-BOM)

1. Go to: Employee Export
2. Select Character Encoding: Unicode (UTF-8-BOM)
3. Click: Export User File

If the User Data File is exported with encoding UTF-8, extract the CSV onto your local machine and follow the steps below to open the CSV file:

1. The encoding of the csv file is UTF-8 without BOM. If it is opened with NotePad++, you can verify its encoding.
2. If it is opened with Excel, the special characters are not displayed correctly because Excel opens it with ANSI encoding by default.

To make Excel to display it correctly, please follow the next steps:

In Data menu, select From Text:

1. Select csv file type in the dialog, and click import button:
2. Select “Delimited” in Original data type, and “65001: Unicode (UTF-8)” in File origin. Click Next button:
3. Select the Delimiters based on the file separators seen in Notepad++.Typically CSV file separators are commas however Successfactors accepts a variety of separators so adjust this accordingly. (if semicolon, select semicolon, etc..).
4. Click Next button
5. Click Finish button
6. Select “New worksheet”. Click Ok button:

• The characters are displayed correctly:

• If the User Data File is exported with encoding Western European (Windows/ISO), extract the CSV onto your local machine and follow the steps below to open the CSV file:

1. Follow Steps 1 and 2 (from 'data menu' section)
2. Please select 1252: Western European (Windows) in next window:

Select the Delimiters based on the file separators seen in Notepad++.Typically CSV file separators are commas however Successfactors accepts a variety of separators so adjust this accordingly. (if semicolon, select semicolon, etc..).

Special characters are displayed correctly.

UDF, User Data File, Special, Character, Characters, Encoding , KBA , csg_q , LOD-SF-PLT , Platform Foundational Capabilities , How To