Data Merge cannot import Myanmar Unicoded UTF-8 formatted csv properly.

Question

I have a csv files typed with Unicode Myanmar Font (Pyidaungsu Font) and Data Merge import can not shown correct characters in InDesign. Attached my test data files and some screen shots.

Eugene Tyson · Accepted Answer

@Joel Cherney might have better insights but here's what I think is going on

I think it's a quirk of how Data Merge handles text encodings. When you import the first UTF-16 file, InDesign caches the encoding and file structure internally. Even if you remove the data source, it doesn’t fully reset that cache. So when you try to load the next UTF-16 file, it often won’t re-read the encoding properly.

A couple of workarounds:
Save and close the document after removing the first data source, then reopen it before importing the next file.

Or give the new data file a different name before importing it (InDesign treats it as new and reloads it cleanly).

Stick to UTF-16 LE with BOM for consistency.

If you’re just updating data, you can overwrite the existing file on disk and choose Update Data Source instead of removing and re-importing.

I don't think it’s your font or file format causing it, I think it’s InDesign keeping old import settings in memory.

Eugene Tyson · Answer

Best of my knowledge Data Merge in InDesign has very limited support for Unicode encodings. Even though your CSV is UTF-8, InDesign often struggles with complex scripts like Myanmar, Hindi, Thai etc.

A few things you can try:

Resave the CSV as UTF-16 (not UTF-8). InDesign often reads UTF-16 text files better.
Instead of CSV, try saving it as a tab-delimited TXT file with UTF-16 encoding. That usually works better with Data Merge.
Make sure the Pyidaungsu font is applied inside InDesign after merging, because InDesign won’t automatically assign it.
If nothing works, one workaround is to prepare the merge in Excel or Google Sheets, then copy-paste into InDesign manually, or use a third-party plugin like EasyCatalog which has much stronger Unicode support.

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