Importing data to Moneydance - a caveat about CVS files and non-Western/ASCII characters.
Ref:
The discussion located at https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/discussions/online-banking/12500...
This discussion includes a suggestion to export the data from an Excel spreadsheet as CVS data, (which is correct), but there's one important fact missing:
If the data contains any non-ASCII, (or extended ASCII), characters, you must export as CVS-UTF-8 otherwise the exported CVS file will contain garbage characters instead of the characters needed. This is especially important if the text is in a non-Western language that isn't compatible with 8-bit ASCII.
Note that I know for a fact that Excel, (up to the 2021 version), exports garbage if your data contains non-Western characters and CVS-UTF-8 isn't chosen. I do not have personal evidence about other spreadsheet programs, or later versions of Excel, but I would consider it a "best practice" to export all CVS data as a CVS file with UTF-8 encoding.
Also note that if your exported CVS still contains garbage characters when you open it to review the data then:
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Your text editor may not support UTF-8. Microsoft's Notepad in later versions of Windows, (I'm using Windows 10), and Notepad++ both support Unicode text.
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If your import contains non-Western characters, (Cyrillic or Asian characters), and they're not displayed properly even with a Unicode aware text editor, you may need to install the necessary fonts on your system.
My system has the necessary Cyrillic fonts, and if the exports are in UTF-8 Unicode, Moneydance has no difficulty importing the non-ASCII (Unicode) characters and producing readable text.
Summary:
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As a general rule, exported data files should be specifically chosen as a UTF-8 CVS export. Likewise other data exports that have a choice of data format or type should be UTF-8 as a "best practice".
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To ensure non-Western characters are displayed properly, make sure that you have the appropriate fonts loaded.
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When printing, make sure that "Download non-printer characters as soft-fonts" is selected within the printer preferences/properties regardless of the source of the printed file.
Comment if you find other issues with this.
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1 Posted by Robert Zeis Jr on 19 Jun, 2025 10:57 PM
This comment was split into a new private discussion: Importing data to Moneydance - a caveat about CVS files and non-Western/ASCII characters.
ok, I have been using this for a few days and i am going nuts trying to make it work. My bank for some reason only allows 3 months of qif files. I am trying to take care of last years accounting and I can not get the correct info uploaded to it . I ve tried using pdf to scsv, qif, etc to no avail. It has me pissed. I could have entered all the info manually by now with all the wasted time .
2 Posted by dtd on 20 Jun, 2025 12:40 AM
Robert, you'd probably have better luck creating a new thread versus posting onto an April thread.
If you do so, I'll provide more than just this advice.
Maddy closed this discussion on 20 Jun, 2025 02:37 PM.