CSV or Excel: which should you upload?
Excel and OpenDocument keep dates and numbers as they are; CSV is plain text and needs the right encoding and separator. When to choose each, and how the separator is read.
- 2 min read
- Updated October 13, 2026
Both work. If you can choose, choose Excel (.xlsx) or OpenDocument (.ods) for data that was typed or edited in a spreadsheet, and CSV for data that comes out of another system.
Which is better for what#
| Excel or OpenDocument | CSV | |
|---|---|---|
| Accents and symbols | Always correct | Correct only if saved as UTF-8 |
| Dates | Stored as real dates; read as 2026-09-27 13:45:00 |
Text: whatever is written in the cell (text, numbers and dates) |
| Long numbers and leading zeros | Excel may already have changed them to numbers (007 becomes 7) |
Kept exactly as written |
| Line breaks and quotes in a cell | Handled for you | Cells with commas, quotes or line breaks must be in double quotes, and a quote inside is written "" |
| Separator | Not applicable | Comma, semicolon or tab |
| Several sheets | Only the first sheet is read | One file, one sheet |
| File size | Larger | Smaller |
Saving as CSV from your program#
- Excel: File → Save As → CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) (*.csv). The plain CSV (Comma delimited) choice saves in your computer's legacy encoding and breaks accents.
- Google Sheets: File → Download → Comma-separated values (.csv). This is UTF-8.
- LibreOffice Calc: File → Save As → Text CSV, tick Edit filter settings, and choose character set Unicode (UTF-8) and field delimiter
,or;. - Excel's "Unicode Text (*.txt)" is read as a tab-separated UTF-16 file and works too.
The separator#
You do not have to say which separator a CSV uses. Content Uploader looks at the first row and picks comma, semicolon or tab; when it is a tie, it prefers the separator the configuration's last file used. Many European versions of Excel save CSV files with semicolons, and that is fine.
If a column list looks wrong (everything in one column, or a column split in two), the separator was guessed wrong. On the file's page, at the bottom, choose the right one under Separator and select Read again. It is offered for CSV files while the original is still kept (30 days) and the file has not been published.
Encoding#
Save CSV files as UTF-8 (a leading byte order mark is fine) or as UTF-16 with a byte order mark. Text in other encodings, such as Windows-1252 from older Excel versions, cannot be read: the file fails with Cells must contain valid UTF-8 text of at most 32 KB. See character encoding.
A rule of thumb#
- Typed or edited by hand in a spreadsheet: Excel or OpenDocument.
- Exported from a shop, a CMS or a database: CSV, as UTF-8, and look at the first rows in a text editor before you upload.
- Dates matter and you export from Excel: Excel.
- Product codes or IDs with leading zeros: CSV, or format the ID column as text in Excel before you type the values.
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