# ID this computer program - Chinese character-to-pinyin Excel conversion **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 31, 2009, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-this-computer-program-chinese-character-to-pinyin-excel-conversion/483884 "2009-01-31T17:45:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Roland\_Orzabal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c2a13f/32.png) [@Roland\_Orzabal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roland_Orzabal)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2009, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-this-computer-program-chinese-character-to-pinyin-excel-conversion/483884/1 "2009-01-31T17:45:01Z")
In a college classes a few years back, I used a piece of commercial software that did this, and for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was called. Googling around for ’ “characters to pinyin” +Excel ’ and the like has been fruitless thus far. The program operated on Excel spreadsheets: given Chinese characters in Column A, it would output the corresponding pinyin into Column B. It may or may not have been capable of doing anything else; this conversion was the only portion of the functionality that I cared about, and that’s still the case now. Has anyone heard of such a thing? If you can help me find it again – or recommend another product that does the same thing – I’d be eternally grateful, as it would make my life much, much easier at the moment. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2009, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-this-computer-program-chinese-character-to-pinyin-excel-conversion/483884/2 "2009-01-31T18:53:56Z")
This is unclear. In win98 you needed to install patches to be able to handle Chinese characters but in XP you don’t. So it could be that you do not need anything, depending on what you want to do which is unclear to me. Can you describe exactly what you have as original data? unicode UTF8? GB2312? Excel should be able to display those and similar. If what you have is byte characters that you want to be interpreted as one of those then you may need to use the CHAR() or similar function. In other words, I think we need more detailed info. Can you give a detailed example? ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2009, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-this-computer-program-chinese-character-to-pinyin-excel-conversion/483884/3 "2009-01-31T19:00:22Z")
That doesn’t sound like a codepage issue; it sounds like the OP wants to convert (already properly displayed) Chinese characters into their [pinyin pronunciations](http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/easia/images/pinyin-p2.gif) (which is mostly just an European alphabet). ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2009, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-this-computer-program-chinese-character-to-pinyin-excel-conversion/483884/4 "2009-01-31T19:20:06Z")
[This?](http://www.kanglin-software.com/createExceltable.html) ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2009, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-this-computer-program-chinese-character-to-pinyin-excel-conversion/483884/5 "2009-01-31T21:10:56Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > That doesn’t sound like a codepage issue; it sounds like the OP wants to convert (already properly displayed) Chinese characters into their [pinyin pronunciations](http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/easia/images/pinyin-p2.gif) (which is mostly just an European alphabet). Oh, shit! Sorry. That’s what I get for not paying enough attention. ---
**Author:** ![Roland\_Orzabal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c2a13f/32.png) [@Roland\_Orzabal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roland_Orzabal)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2009, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-this-computer-program-chinese-character-to-pinyin-excel-conversion/483884/6 "2009-02-01T00:16:25Z")
> [@cckerberos](#): > > [This?](http://www.kanglin-software.com/createExceltable.html) That’s it! Thanks a million.