Why Are There Garbled Characters in Event Data I Exported from WAF?

Causes

The exported event data is in CSV format. If you use Excel to open the file, there will be garbled characters. This happens when the exported CSV file is encoded in UTF-8, as Excel opens file in ANSI format.

Solutions

Method 1

1. Open the CSV file with Excel in the following manner:
   1. Create an Excel file.
   2. Choose Data > Get External Data From Text.
   3. Select the exported CSV file and click Import. The Text Import Wizard dialog box is displayed.
   4. Select Delimited and click Next.
   5. Deselect Tab, select Comma, and click Next.
   6. Click OK.
   7. In the Import Data dialog box, click OK.
2. Use a text editor such as Notepad or use WPS to open the CSV file.

Method 2

1. Use the Notepad text editor to open the exported CSV file.
2. Choose File > Save as.
3. Select ANSI for Encoding, change the file name but keep the extension .csv unchanged to avoid overwriting the original file, and click Save.

   Use Excel to open the new CSV file. Generally, characters can be displayed normally.