Not showing æ, ø and å in data merge.

[Harlund_Design]

Hello.

I am making a document with data merge, and for that, I have created a .csv file, and it works. The only problem is, that when I import it into the InDesign dokument, it isn't showing æ, ø and å, but weird symbols.

I have tried to make the .csv in different formats, but nothing helps.

Can anyone help, please?

[Willi Adelberger]

1. How did you encode it? UTF-8 or 16?
2. What kind of text did you make the CSV export?
3. Did you try to export as tab separated text alternatively?
4. Does your font have those extended characters, not all have them.

[Harlund_Design]

1. I tried both, none worked

2. What do you mean?

3. Yes, and that still doesn't work

4. Yes, it is Lato (Google font), and I can correct the letters with find/replace, though that isn't an option in the long run.

[Willi Adelberger]

2. E.g. Excels offers different text encodings, Mac, Windows, etc. try a different. If you export from MS Office, it is more reliable on Windows than on the Mac as MS Office in non-Englich versions is messed up when it comes to export to text.

[Harlund_Design]

Maybe that's the problem...? The csv file is exported from a Windows based system, and used in InDesign on a Mac...

[Willi Adelberger · Accepted solution]

Yes, that could be the problem. In that case, I would try to export it on the same computer OS and language as InDesign is working. Same language, because MS Office is acting differently in different languages. At least here in German we have huge problems with MS Office exporting files in German as German numbers exchange dot and comma compared to English numbers, but MS Office exchange it here not only in the content, but also in the code, which is wrong and causes a lot of workflow problems. But to avoid it, I export as tab separated text because with CSV the commas become dots and it does not work in InDesign.

[Harlund_Design]

Thanks for your time and help.