Publisher 2.6.2 adding characters to my mail merge

[P.Monk]

After the latest update (2.6.2), I noticed that when I do a mail merge for our newsletter, Publisher adds certain characters (see below):

My workaround has been to find and replace "+ACY-" with "&" and delete "+ACO" with another find and replace.

However, I would be happier if the program would not include these extras. Is this a known bug or is it just me?

Thank you!
P. Monk

[Hangman]

Hi @P.Monk and welcome to the forums,

This sounds like a formatting issue with your source data, i.e., the source data not formatted as UTF-8? Which application are you using to create the source data file?

[lacerto]

In my experience UTF-8 is not required. E.g. Ansi encoding works fine (at least on Windows).

[P.Monk]

Thank you, Hangman & lacerto, for your quick responses. 

My source file is a CSV text file that I get back from the USPS web page after it has checked all my addresses. How would I format it in UTF-8?

P. Monk

[Old Bruce]

42 minutes ago, P.Monk said:

My source file is a CSV text file that I get back from the USPS web page after it has checked all my addresses. How would I format it in UTF-8?

If it was me I would open the CSV file with BBEdit and use that application to change the file's encoding to UTF-8. But then I have BBEdit, I am unaware of what other Text Editing applications can change the encoding but I feel certain that there are several for Windows as well as Mac OS.

[P.Monk]

Thank you, Old Bruce!
I use LibreOffice Calc to edit my source, so I found out that you can change a file to UTF-8 when you save it. I did it, and now there's no problem with the formatting in Publisher!