3046527 - Alternate languages not displaying correctly in export file CSV

After running an export like an employee export or extended user export, for some alternate languages like Japanese or Chinese the characters are not displayed correctly in the .csv file

SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite

1. Create a user with a Japanese or Chinese name
2. Run an employee export using the correct encoding type of UTF-8
3. Open the .csv file and check your example user
4. You will see the characters for the name are not correct and will display something like - ?? å§“ę¤œęŸ»ē¸¬? 
5. If you open the file with notepad you will see the correct characters for the language

This is an issue with Excel not SuccessFactors

If you are using MS Excel 2003 or 2008 version, it will open UTF-8 encoded csv file in UTF-8 automatically so you wouldn’t face such issue. Latest MS excel deprecated that feature and seems open any encoding file in Windows/ISO encoding. If you’re using other tools like Notepad++, and open UTF-8 encoded csv file, it will display the language correctly.

1. If you cannot/or you do not know how to change the way your MS Excel's default encoding when opening csv file  a workaround is to load the data from the exported .csv to a new blank excel sheet
2. Open a new excel sheet and select the tab "Data"
3. Select the option "From Text/CSV"
4. Select the exported .csv you downloaded
5. From the load screen which displays - you will see the default encoding is set to Western Europe Window/ISO 
6. Change this to UTF-8, I would also suggest changing the option "Data Type Detection" to “Based on entire dataset” as for large files, leaving as just the default first 200 may lead to errors
7. Select "Load"
8. Once finished you will see the correct characters for the language

Japanese Chinese encoding utf-8 export extended user export employee export strange characters incorrect characters , KBA , LOD-SF-PLT-UEX , Employee Export Issues , Problem