Problems with Indesign's data merge feature

Excel uses UTF-16 encoding, which is Unicode-based and can represent a wide range of characters, including those with accents and other diacritics. However, the merge process may be converting the file to a different encoding, such as ANSI or Windows-1252, which may not support these characters. This can result in the characters being replaced with question marks or other symbols.

To avoid this problem, you can try the following:

• Save your Excel file as a UTF-8 file before merging it. UTF-8 is a Unicode-based encoding that is compatible with most systems.

• Use a Unicode-aware merge process. Several merge tools are Unicode-aware, meaning that they can preserve the formatting of your Excel file, including the characters with accents and diacritics.

• Convert the merge data to UTF-16 encoding. If you are merging data from another source, you can convert it to UTF-16 encoding before merging it with your Excel file. This will ensure that the characters with accents and diacritics are preserved.