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Download a query report in UTF-8 format

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Important

This article is for the legacy Workplace Analytics app and does not reflect functionality available on the updated Viva Insights platform. Access current documentation for Viva Insights advanced insights here: advanced insights documentation.

Your query reports might not open properly if their data contains certain (multibyte) characters. This topic describes this problem and its workaround.

Cannot properly open a .csv file

Background

When you run a query in Microsoft Viva Insights, the query results are available as a .csv file that you can then download and view in Microsoft Excel.

At least one of the metrics in queries include meeting data from Outlook, which includes meeting subject lines. At least some of the meeting subject lines contains multibyte characters. This might be because your organization uses a multibyte language (such as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean), or because the data contains characters such as an EM-DASH (—) or letters with diacritical marks (such as the ã in "São Paulo").

Problem

These multibyte characters cause the .csv file to malfunction if you try to open it in Excel in the default way.

Solution

You can import a .csv file by opening it in Microsoft Excel. After you open it, you can save it as an Excel file (with the .xlsx extension) or as a .csv file in UTF-8 format. The steps to do this differ in different versions of Excel. The following describes the steps for Excel versions 2017 and 2010.

Excel 2017

  1. In Viva Insights, download the .zip file that contains the .csv report file.
  2. Extract the .csv file to a safe location on your computer; take note of this folder.
  3. Open a new workbook in Microsoft Excel.
  4. On the ribbon, open the Data tab.
  5. In the Get & Transform Data area, select From Text/CSV.
  6. In the Import Data dialog box, select the extracted .csv file and select Import.
  7. In the dialog box that appears, change File Origin to 65001: Unicode (UTF-8).
  8. In the preview pane, examine the data. If it is still incorrect, contact Microsoft support for further guidance. If the data is correct, go to the next step.
  9. Select Comma as the delimiter.
  10. Select Load.

Excel 2010

  1. In Viva Insights, download the .zip file that contains the .csv report file.

  2. Extract the .csv file to a safe location on your computer; take note of this folder.

  3. Open a new workbook in Microsoft Excel.

  4. On the ribbon, open the Data tab.

  5. In the Get External Data area, select From Text.

  6. In the Import Text File dialog box, locate the extracted .csv file and select Import.

  7. In the Text Import Wizard, do the following:

    • Step 1 of 3: Under Original data type, select Delimited and then select Next.
    • Step 2 of 3: In the Delimiters area, select Comma and then select Next.
    • Step 3 of 3: Under Column data format, select Text and then select Finish.

  8. The Import Data dialog box asks where you want to put the data. Choose any cell in the blank worksheet and then select OK.

The multibyte characters should now show up correctly in Excel. You can save the file as an Excel file or an OpenDocument Spreadsheet file without losing the multibyte characters.

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