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Non english characters not importing properly - csv to sharepoint

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Posted on by ringmjar

I get data to a group e-mail with a csv attachment. The csv contains text data in swedish which somtimes includes the letters å,ä,ö.

I want to save the data to a sharepoint list but as soon as I read the data from the file I get "escape characters" instead of å,ä,ö.

If I just save the file with power automate the swedish special letters remains readable in the csv file in sharepoint.

How can I extract the data without getting the questionmarks where the special characters were?

File content aft

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EmadBeshai 806 Moderator on at

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Hi @ringmjar ,

.csv file is a kind of text file. If you encode it in UTF-8 format, there are two ways to save it.
- Text only
- Byte Order Mark(BOM)+Text
BOM is 3 characters (EF BB BF) to mark the file is encoded as UTF-8.
When you generate .csv file in Power Automate, it does not include BOM.
So, when you open the .csv file in excel, special characters(i.e. Korean) will be broken.

The solution is to add 3 BOM characters in front of the .csv file content before saving it.

concat(uriComponentToString('%EF%BB%BF'),body('Create_CSV_table'))

Please mark this answer as the solution if it helped you. Thank you!

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ringmjar 6 on at

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Thanks for the reply.
I have seen a similar answer before on another post but I cant figure out how to do it.
The problem is not saving the file. I can save the file and keep the special characters as shown on the last picture in my original post.
The problem is reading the data. In the solution you posted, you say use the 'Create_CSV_table'. But I cant compose that csv data without getting the replacement "?" in the data.

Do you understand my problem?
I dont really need to save the file in sharepoint at all. I just want to read the data in the attachment from the e-mail including the special characters.

Any ideas?

Regards

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ringmjar 6 on at

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See reply above

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Chriddle 8,443 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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I think this is because:

This text is not encoded in UTF-8, but in code page 1252 (or similar). So don't add a BOM

Since the PA web interface uses utf-8, these characters are not displayed correctly.

However, they exist unchanged in the data.

This allows you to save the file contents and makes it look good when your display application can handle the code page.

I don't know of a way to convert this to utf-8 in PA without using an external service.

Conclusion: Use utf-8, this code page hell was decades ago 😉

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EmadBeshai 806 Moderator on at

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Hi @ringmjar ,

I created a sample flow to show you what you need to do

If this post helps you with your problem, please mark your as Accepted solution.If you like my response, please give it a Thumbs Up.

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Chriddle 8,443 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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I recommend to check the character encoding of the file first.

Every good text editor software can do that.

You can not change the character encoding by adding a BOM.

If the original file isn't utf-8, this won't help.

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