# Encoding Encoding ensures all characters in your data file are displayed correctly when importing your product data. Choosing the wrong encoding type can lead to misinterpreted data, which can affect your entire dataset. For example, special characters like `é` and `ä` can appear as strange symbols or quotation marks (`?`). *** ### Common encoding types * **UTF-8:** Recommended for most languages. Can handle a wide array of characters. * **ISO-8859-1:** Suitable for data containing characters from Western European languages. Supports a more limited character set compared to UTF-8. ### How Channable handles encoding When importing product data from a data file, you'll be prompted to select your encoding type. * **Automatically detect:** Channable will attempt to automatically identify your encoding type by analyzing common patterns in your data file. This works for most standard imports. * **Manually select:** If you know your file's specific coding type, select it from the list. ### Why is selecting the right encoding important? If after importing your product data you see strange, unreadable characters, or special characters are missing, this is likely an encoding error. Selecting the right encoding tells Channable how to interpret your data to ensure your product names, descriptions, and other attributes display correctly. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://helpcenter.channable.com/import-data/import-how-to/import-your-product-data/import-via-a-data-file/requirements-for-import-files/encoding.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.