What is the right CSV encoding for c# to open with Excel?

Question

I write a CSV with my C# CSVWriter based on a StreamWriter. In my data I have a lot of special characters like "Bávaro".

So when I use UTF-8 or ASCII to encode my CSV I can't get the "á" but I can open it in Excel afterwards perfectly. When I use Unicode my CSV has the correct char but in fact when I open this CSV in Excel it doesnt get automaticly sorted like my other CSV, all values are in the first column as string....

What is the right encoding here?

Answer 1

I recommend using Windows ANSI Codepage 1252 which you can get via:

Encoding.GetEncoding(1252)

It supports characters like "á" and works well from Excel 2003 to Excel 2013.