php header excel and utf-8

Question

ob_start();

echo 'Désçàui';

header("Content-Type:   application/vnd.ms-excel; charset=utf-8");
header("Content-type:   application/x-msexcel; charset=utf-8");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=Test.xls"); 
header("Expires: 0");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
header("Cache-Control: private",false); 

ob_end_flush();

What I'm getting in the excel file is DÃ©sÃ§Ã ui

However, I do get Désçàui when I try

ob_start();
echo 'Désçàui';
header("Content-Type:   text/html; charset=utf-8");
ob_end_flush();

Any help experts?

PS. The file is saved in DW with Title/Encoding Unicode(Utf-8).

I don't think it makes sense to provide a charset attribute for a MIME type that's not even text. — Álvaro González
– Álvaro González, Commented Mar 20, 2011 at 13:03
Since when was a block of plain text considered an Excel file? — Mark Baker
– Mark Baker, Commented Mar 20, 2011 at 16:56

nobug · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-01 16:04:44Z

28

Source http://www.mwasif.com/2007/5/download-data-csv-using-php/

Solution worked for me

Danish Zahur said,

October 7, 2009 @ 7:23 pm

If your contents are in UTF-8 format, then no need to convert encoding. Just start your file/output stream with UTF-8 BOM after headers.

echo pack("CCC",0xef,0xbb,0xbf);

And header should contain encoding UTF-8

header( "Content-type: application/vnd.ms-excel; charset=UTF-8" );

It will work like charm because Excel will recognize file charset with BOM bytes.

edited Oct 1, 2015 at 16:04

nobug

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answered May 12, 2011 at 10:43

Asif

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3 Comments

Tomas Gonzalez Over a year ago

I can't understand how this REALLY WORKED! Thanks!!

sulaiman Over a year ago

if I add the "echo pack" thing the characters actually displayed good, but all the items becomes in one excel cell, if I removed this, the character displayed like unknown symbols, but each item of the array is in different cell as excpected

Lis Over a year ago

this is currently the working solution (as of 2020). Thank you a lot!

Dr.Molle · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-20 11:54:17Z

23

I'm not sure, but it may be that excel can not handle utf8(may depend on the version). But it can handle utf16, so try converting the charset. This works for me(in excel2002):

echo mb_convert_encoding('Désçàui','utf-16','utf-8');

edited Mar 20, 2011 at 11:54

answered Mar 20, 2011 at 11:48

Dr.Molle

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2 Comments

user285594 Over a year ago

echo mb_convert_encoding($r->lastname,'utf-16','utf-8');

b1919676 Over a year ago

Thank you, sir. Still useful more than 7 years later.

gonetil · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-17 23:10:28Z

20

I don't know how you're generating the excel file. But, if you're doing it from an HTML output, you can just add the following at the begining:

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="application/xhtml+xml; charset=UTF-8" />

Regards

answered Apr 17, 2012 at 23:10

gonetil

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Comments

Mladen Janjetovic · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-03 13:56:35Z

11

This UTF-8 BOM line of code made my UTF-8 chars work fine:

 header("Content-type: application/vnd.ms-excel");
 header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename='".$file_name."'");
 header("Pragma: no-cache");
 header("Expires: 0");
 echo "\xEF\xBB\xBF"; //UTF-8 BOM
 echo $out;

edited Jun 3, 2015 at 13:56

answered Mar 28, 2014 at 14:25

Mladen Janjetovic

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1 Comment

theking2 Over a year ago

This is the one solution that works like a breeze with Excel 2016. Thanks Mladen Janjetovic!

Taher · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-22 10:54:49Z

4

Converting utf8 to html-entities worked quite nicely for me :

$str = 'utf-string ...';
if (mb_detect_encoding($str ) == 'UTF-8') {
   $str = mb_convert_encoding($str , "HTML-ENTITIES", "UTF-8");
}

header('Content-type: application/x-msdownload; charset=utf-16');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=companies.xls');
header('Pragma: no-cache');
header('Expires: 0');

echo $str ;

answered Apr 22, 2013 at 10:54

Taher

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Comments

Unicron · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-20 11:40:55Z

3

The content-type headers are relevant for the browser only. They have no effect on downloaded files. Once the file is saved, it is up to the application to decide how it treats the data in the file.

The example you show is not a valid Excel file in the first place. When encountering what it must think is a broken file, Excel probably switches to some default processing that assumes windows-1252 or some other single-byte character set.

You would have to give Excel a proper file to open. Alternatively, it may be possible to use the old "Output HTML but save as XLS" trick and specify a UTF-8 encoding in that HTML file.

answered Mar 20, 2011 at 11:40

Unicron

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3 Comments

Jeremy Roy Over a year ago

Hi, could you please tell how do you create excel file? Thanks Unicorn.

Mark Baker Over a year ago

@Jeremy Roy - There are a number of libraries that allow you to create real Excel files from PHP. Personally, I'd recommend PHPExcel

Mohammad Naji Over a year ago

@Unicorn Would you please link an example with that ugly (but working) solution? I'm talking about generating an HTML file but downloading it as xls. Thank you

Manee Mana · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-13 11:13:11Z

try this

<?php
header("Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel");
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="sample.xls"');
echo "
    <html xmlns:o=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office\" xmlns:x=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40\">
    <html>
        <head><meta http-equiv=\"Content-type\" content=\"text/html;charset=utf-8\" /></head>
        <body>
";

echo "
    <table>
      <tr>
        <th rowspan=\"2\" nowrap=\"nowrap\">เลขที่บัญชี</th>
        <th rowspan=\"2\" nowrap=\"nowrap\">ชื่อ-สกุล ลูกค้า</th>
        <th rowspan=\"2\" nowrap=\"nowrap\">OS/Balance</th>
        <th rowspan=\"2\" nowrap=\"nowrap\">วันที่</th>
        <th rowspan=\"2\" nowrap=\"nowrap\">เวลา</th>
        <th rowspan=\"2\" nowrap=\"nowrap\">Action Code</th>
        <th rowspan=\"2\" nowrap=\"nowrap\">Amount</th>
        <th colspan=\"5\" nowrap=\"nowrap\">ผลการติดตาม</th>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <th nowrap=\"nowrap\">ที่อยู่บ้าน</th>
        <th nowrap=\"nowrap\">เบอร์โทรบ้าน</th>
        <th nowrap=\"nowrap\">เบอร์โทรมือถือ</th>
        <th nowrap=\"nowrap\">ที่อยู่ที่ทำงาน</th>
        <th nowrap=\"nowrap\">เบอร์โทรที่ทำงาน</th>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>acc</td>
        <td>name</td>
        <td>balance</td>
        <td>date</td>
        <td>time</td>
        <td>code</td>
        <td>amount</td>
        <td>h-addr</td>
        <td>h-tel</td>
        <td>cell</td>
        <td>w-addr</td>
        <td>w-tel</td>
      </tr>
    </table>
";

echo "</body></html>";

?>

Hi! Your example works for me if I add - "echo "\xEF\xBB\xBF"; //UTF-8 BOM" then it works great. But do you know hot to make usual table in excel without empty space ?

EkoDrive · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-13 06:05:55Z

1

Try this:

header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream"); 
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary"); 
header('Expires: '.gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s').' GMT'); 
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename = "Export '.date("Y-m-d").'.xls"'); 
header('Pragma: no-cache'); 

//these characters will make correct encoding to excel 
echo chr(255).chr(254).iconv("UTF-8", "UTF-16LE//IGNORE", $out);

answered Dec 13, 2017 at 6:05

EkoDrive

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