Forum Discussion
Excel 365 (EU) CSV Export on MacOS
1. Quickly export EU format CSV
Steps for correct saving
In Excel:
Click “File” → “Export” → “Change File Type”.
Select “CSV (comma separated) (.csv)”.
Click “Save” → Select in the pop-up dialog box:
Character encoding: Unicode (UTF-8)
Field Separator: Comma
Text qualifier: ”
2. Terminal validation format
bash
# Check file encoding and delimiter
file -I exported_file.csv
head -n1 exported_file.csv | od -c
3. Solve common garbled code problems
Force UTF-8 with BOM
powershell
# Convert via PowerShell (Mac requires PowerShell Core)
Get-Content -Path “input.csv” | Out-File -FilePath “output.csv” -Encoding utf8BOM
4. Replace the separator
bash
# Convert semicolons to commas (for European formats)
iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 input.csv | tr ';' ',' > output.csv
5. Automated Scripting Programs
AppleScript automated export
applescript
tell application “Microsoft Excel”
set csvFormat to CSV file format
set csvFormat's TextFileCommaDelimiter to true
save workbook as filename “output.csv” file format csvFormat
end tell
6. Python Precision Control
Python
import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_excel(“input.xlsx”)
df.to_csv(“output.csv”, sep=“,”, encoding=“utf-8-sig”, quotechar='"', index=False)
7. System level region settings
Temporarily switch the region format
bash
# Temporarily set to EU region before exporting
defaults write -g AppleLocale en_GB
8. Modify Excel defaults
bash
# Force Excel to use comma separators
defaults write com.microsoft.Excel CSVDecimalSeparator -string ”,”
defaults write com.microsoft.Excel CSVListSeparator -string ”,”
Hi Mikayla
Thanks for your response (or your AI's). I would appreciate tips on how to reach that Export menu:
Also, I would prefer not to have to use Pandas nor Python to export to "Comma Separated Values" which are actually separated by commas, as mentioned in the initial post.
All this AI generated unverified responses just fill the forum with clutter and make misleading, random suggestions.