Converting non readable characters in an Excel exported CSV file

PHP
1

When importing an Excel generated CSV file with PHP there are a few non-readable characters being returned.
I’ve tried a number of things to correct it.

I tried converting the character encoding with mb_convert_encoding(). That changed the non-printing characters to other non-printing characters.

I’ve also been trying to identify the non-printing characters ASCII values.

This script below does a good job of getting most of it, but it misses a dash.

http://www.unexpectedit.com/php/php-clean-string-of-utf8-chars-convert-to-similar-ascii-char

Any thoughts on how to convert the remaining ‘character’?

Thank you E

2

Do you know what’s the original encoding of the Excel file? Apparently, it can be different depending on the setting you choose when you output the file: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/508558/what-charset-does-microsoft-excel-use-when-saving-files

A couple of other questions:
Can you generate your CSV file yourself or is coming from an external source?
Can you upload your CSV file somewhere so we can try it out?
What are you using to import the CSV file? Custom code or a library?