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Hilfe - Produkte & Funktionen
German English
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Opening CSV Exports in Excel

Many lists in the bessa Manager can be exported as a CSV file – for example articles, invoices or the cash journal. To make sure special characters, amounts and times arrive correctly in Excel, do not open the file by double-clicking; load it through Excel's import function instead. This page shows the steps on Windows and Mac and helps when Excel reads numbers incorrectly.

Why not double-click?

When you open a file by double-clicking or drag-and-drop, Excel guesses the character set, separator and number format on its own. Depending on the file and the computer's regional settings, this leads to:

  • garbled special characters (e.g. ä instead of ä),

  • all values in a single column,

  • amounts that are many times too large, or ##### in the cells.

Importing lets you set these options yourself.

Importing a CSV file into Excel (Windows)

  1. Open a new, empty workbook in Excel.

  2. On the ribbon, select Data → From Text/CSV and choose the exported file.

  3. In the preview window, check the three settings at the top:

    • File Origin:

      65001: Unicode (UTF-8)

    • Delimiter:

      Semicolon

    • Data Type Detection: Based on first 200 rows (default)

  4. Check the columns with amounts in the preview. If they are correct, click Load. If they are too large, follow the section Amounts are read incorrectly.

Importing a CSV file into Excel (Mac)

  1. Open a new, empty workbook in Excel.

  2. Select File → Import, then CSV file, and choose the exported file.

  3. In the Text Import Wizard, select Delimited and set the file origin to Unicode (UTF-8).

  4. Select Semicolon as the delimiter.

  5. If the file contains amounts with a dot as the decimal separator (e.g. 12.50), set the decimal separator to . via Advanced in the last step.

  6. Click Finish.

Newer Excel versions for Mac also offer Data → From Text/CSV. The same settings as on Windows apply there.

Amounts are read incorrectly

Excel reads numbers according to your computer's regional settings. With German settings, for example, the comma is the decimal separator and the dot is the thousands separator. If a file contains amounts with a dot, such as -5.9300, Excel turns them into -59300.

How to spot it: the amounts in the preview are 100, 1,000 or 10,000 times too large, or Excel shows only ##### after loading.

Recommended: read the column with a matching locale

This keeps the amounts as real numbers you can calculate with:

  1. In the preview window, click Transform Data. The Power Query Editor opens.

  2. Right-click the header of the column with the amounts.

  3. Select Change Type → Using Locale…

  4. Select Decimal Number as the data type and English (United States) as the locale. Confirm with OK.

  5. If Excel asks whether to replace the existing step, select Replace current.

  6. Repeat this for every other column with amounts.

  7. Click Home → Close & Load.

Quick alternative: do not detect data types

In the preview window, set Data Type Detection to Do not detect data types and click Load. Excel then takes over all values unchanged as text.

With this setting the amounts are text: sums, range filters and pivot tables do not work with them. Times also stay in UTC (see below). For any analysis, use the recommended approach.

Times in UTC

Timestamps in the format 2026-09-30T16:08:47Z are given in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) – that is what the Z at the end stands for. In Central Europe, local time is one hour ahead in winter (CET) and two hours ahead in summer (CEST).

With automatic data type detection, Excel converts such timestamps to your computer's local time during import. If you read the column as text, you see the UTC time.

Saving the file as CSV again after editing

If you want to import an edited file again, for example the article export:

  1. Select File → Save As.

  2. Choose CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) as the file type.

Do not change any column headers. The import detects semicolon, comma and tab as separators on its own.

Frequently asked questions

Which separator do the exports use? Semicolon (;) and the UTF-8 character set.

Why do exports look different? The article export follows the language set in the browser for column names and number format. Other exports, such as the cash journal, currently contain amounts with a dot as the decimal separator. For those, see Amounts are read incorrectly.

A column only shows #####. Either the column is too narrow – double-clicking the right edge of the column header adjusts the width – or the amount was read incorrectly. Check the value in the formula bar.

Special characters are displayed incorrectly. The file origin is not set to UTF-8. Import the file again and select 65001: Unicode (UTF-8).

All values are in one column. The separator is wrong. Select Semicolon during import.