Go to "Releases" and download the utf8csv-*.msi file from the latest release and run it.
The first time you open a CSV file after installation, Windows may ask you to confirm the file association. Select "utf8csv" and check "Always use this app to open .csv files".
Open a CSV file as usual from within Windows Explorer. (Opening a CSV from within Excel is not supported.)
As the file handler for CSV files, this program will prepend a "Byte order mark" (BOM) to the CSV file to identify it to Excel as using UTF-8 encoding, which is the most commonly used encoding for CSV files these days. Then it will launch Excel to open the file.
After Excel releases the file, the program will strip the BOM from the CSV file (as other programs may have issues with the weird extra characters). This behavior is configurable.
Run "Utf8csv" from your start menu to change options and view runtime logs.
Not supported: Opening a CSV file from Excel > File > Open.
If you use the legacy "import from text" function in Excel to import a CSV file, you can set the default encoding to UTF-8 in this program's options.
This option sets a value for
DefaultCPGin theHKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\{version}\Excel\Optionsregistry key.
Uninstall "utf8csv" Windows' "Add or remove programs".
See Contributing.