Why are strange characters showing up in product descriptions after CSV upload?

Topic summary

A user encountered encoding issues after uploading a modified product CSV to their Shopify store using the Simple Theme. While price updates applied correctly, special characters in product descriptions became corrupted—specifically, bullet points (•) now display as “‚Ä¢”.

Key Questions:

  • Root cause of the character encoding problem
  • How to fix existing corrupted descriptions
  • Prevention strategies for future CSV uploads

Status: The issue remains unresolved. A second user has asked whether a solution was found, indicating this may be a common problem. No answers or workarounds have been provided yet.

Summarized with AI on November 1. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.

Listings issue on Simple Theme:

I downloaded a products export .csv sheet.

I updated the prices and put all items on sale.

I uploaded the sheet with those changes.

The prices are updated correctly.

However some strange characters appear in the body description of the product listings.

Example • appears instead of a bullet point.

Why did this happen?

How can I fix it?

How can I prevent it in the future?

Thank you in advance.

Hey,

Have you found a solution to this problem?