Support Article
Special characters in Excel are parsed incorrectly
SA-105561
Summary
Special characters in Excel are parsed incorrectly despite uploading the CSV files in the application. As a result, '?' symbols display instead of special characters in the application.
Error Messages
Not Applicable
Steps to Reproduce
Upload any CSV file to the Binary file.
Root Cause
An issue in the custom application code or rules.
The CSV file and the JVM are not encoded to UTF-8. Hence, the special characters are not recognized since they have ANSI encoding.
ANSI supports only a few characters (such as '#', '$', '%', '*', and ',') and does not recognize the remaining characters (such as, 'á', 'é', 'ó', and 'ú'). Hence, the special characters display as '?' symbols.
Resolution
Perform the following local-change to encode the JVM:
Add the below line in a standalone.conf file if the server is JBOSS. For a Tomcat server, add the line of code in the setenv.bat file.
JAVA_OPTS=%JAVA_OPTS% -Dfile.encoding=UTF8
For CSV file encoding, refer to the video in: https://community.pega.com/video-library/support-guide-how-troubleshoot-special-characters-during-csv-file-import
Published April 10, 2020 - Updated October 8, 2020
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