Issue:
NetBotz Downloaded sensor data in CSV file shows special characters
Product Line:
NetBotz
Environment:
NBRK0750
NBWL0755
Cause:
Netbotz allows the user to download CSVs, mainly the Temperature Sensor data CSV, the Rack Access CSV, and the Alarms CSV. When a customer opens a CSV downloaded from Netbotz in Excel, strange characters will sometimes appear.
A specific example is that Temperature Sensor data has a temperature degree symbol, which is replaced by random characters.
This is only a problem when opening a file in Excel.
Other apps like Numbers read the data normally. This is because Excel does not automatically recognize UTF-8, the format of the CSVs.
So, certain bytes in the text file are being read as the ANSI encoding in Excel.
Resolution:
Instead of double-clicking and opening the file directly in Excel, do the following:
Open Excel Go to “New” and create a blank workbook
Go to “Data” in the Excel app
Click the dropdown “Get Data (Power Query)”
Select “From Text (Legacy)”
Select the CSV, in this case the temperature sensor data CSV
The Text Import Wizard should automatically appear. Select the “Delimited” option
On the same screen, click on the “File origin” drop down menu. Select “Unicode (UTF-8)”. Click Next
In the “Delimiters” column, deselect “Tab” and select “Comma”
Click “Finish”. The data should default to the Existing sheet, with the formula =$A$1
The data should appear with no strange characters in the UTF-8 encoding.
NetBotz Downloaded sensor data in CSV file shows special characters
Product Line:
NetBotz
Environment:
NBRK0750
NBWL0755
Cause:
Netbotz allows the user to download CSVs, mainly the Temperature Sensor data CSV, the Rack Access CSV, and the Alarms CSV. When a customer opens a CSV downloaded from Netbotz in Excel, strange characters will sometimes appear.
A specific example is that Temperature Sensor data has a temperature degree symbol, which is replaced by random characters.
This is only a problem when opening a file in Excel.
Other apps like Numbers read the data normally. This is because Excel does not automatically recognize UTF-8, the format of the CSVs.
So, certain bytes in the text file are being read as the ANSI encoding in Excel.
Resolution:
Instead of double-clicking and opening the file directly in Excel, do the following:
Open Excel Go to “New” and create a blank workbook
Go to “Data” in the Excel app
Click the dropdown “Get Data (Power Query)”
Select “From Text (Legacy)”
Select the CSV, in this case the temperature sensor data CSV
The Text Import Wizard should automatically appear. Select the “Delimited” option
On the same screen, click on the “File origin” drop down menu. Select “Unicode (UTF-8)”. Click Next
In the “Delimiters” column, deselect “Tab” and select “Comma”
Click “Finish”. The data should default to the Existing sheet, with the formula =$A$1
The data should appear with no strange characters in the UTF-8 encoding.
Released for:APC Canada
