How to export a CSV from Excel

This guide shows you how to save an Excel workbook as a CSV, using the format that preserves accents and special characters.

What you'll need

  • Your wine list in Excel 2016 or later, or Microsoft 365 (older versions don't offer the UTF-8 option — see Common issues below).
  • A few minutes to tidy your sheet into the defined format.

Step-by-step

1

Open your workbook

Open your wine collection in Excel. If the file has multiple sheets (for example, "Cellar", "Drunk", "Wishlist"), click the tab you want to export at the bottom of the window. Excel saves only the active sheet as CSV.

2

Check your top row

Row 1 should contain your column headers (for example: Name, Vintage, Region, Quantity). If your top row is a title, a merged banner, or an empty padding row, delete those rows so your headers sit in row 1.

3

Save as CSV UTF-8

  1. Click File, then Save As (on Mac, File → Save As…). Pick a location you'll remember.
  2. In the file-format dropdown (labelled Save as type on Windows, File Format on Mac), select CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) (.csv).
  3. Click Save. Your file will appear at the location you chose.

Avoid the plain CSV (Comma delimited), CSV (Macintosh), and CSV (MS-DOS) options — they use older encodings that corrupt accents and other non-ASCII characters.

4

Dismiss the warning

Excel will warn that some features (formulas, formatting, multiple sheets) can't be saved in CSV. Click OK or Yes — CSV is a plain-text format, and the importer only needs the values.

Common issues

Accents look wrong after import

This almost always means you saved using plain CSV (Comma delimited) rather than CSV UTF-8. Re-export with the correct format and upload again.

Dates changed after saving

Excel may rewrite dates to its locale format (e.g. 15/04/2026 in the UK, 4/15/2026 in the US). If you need YYYY-MM-DD preserved, format the date column as Text in Excel before saving.

No "CSV UTF-8" option in the dropdown

Your Excel version is too old to support UTF-8 CSV directly. The simplest fix is to upload your .xlsx file to Google Drive, open it in Google Sheets, and follow the Google Sheets guide — Google Sheets exports UTF-8 by default.

Next steps

With your CSV saved, walk through the remaining guides in order:

  1. Getting your cellar ready to import — check your column headers and required fields before upload.
  2. Importing your cellar — what happens when you upload, how errors and duplicates are handled, and the after-import summary.

Or go straight to sign up and upload.

Back to Resources Get Started Free