title: How to export pound symbol from a C# Web App to Excel correctly? (Â£ is produced instead of £)
body: <p>We're exporting some data from a website app into an Excel spreadsheet, however, when a GBP symbol is used, instead of outputting "£9.99" it produces "Â£9.99".</p>
  
  <p>Here's the code a colleague has written to produce the spreadsheet [tableOut is a StringBuilder that contains an HTML table]:</p>
  
  <pre><code>string filename = "EngageReplies.xls";
  Response.Clear();
  Response.Buffer = true;
  Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel";
  Response.AddHeader( "content-disposition", "attachment;filename=" + filename );
  Response.Charset = "UTF-8";
  Response.ContentEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;
  this.EnableViewState = false;
  
  Response.Write( tableOut );
  Response.End();
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Any ideas how we can get the desired output?</p>
  
  <p>p.s. Not sure if I should separate this into a separate question, but when the spreadsheet is generated, a warning message is triggered:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>The file you are trying to open,
    'EngageReplies.xls', is in a different
    format than specified by the file
    extension. Verify that the file is not
    corrupted and is from a trusted source
    before opening the file. Do you want
    to open the file now?</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I've used Firefox and IE to Open the file with Office 2007. Clicking Yes opens the file okay, but I would prefer it if my users weren't subjected to it.</p>