<p>I have a Ruby script that generates a UTF8 CSV file remotely in a Linux machine and then transfers the file to a Windows machine thru SFTP. </p>

<p>I then need to open this file with Excel, but Excel doesn't get UTF8, so I always need to open the file in a text editor that has the capability to convert UTF8 to ANSI.</p>

<p>I would love to do this programmatically using Ruby and avoid the manual conversion step. What's the easiest way to do it?</p>

<p>PS: I tried using iconv but had no success.</p>

```
```
ascii_str = yourUTF8text.unpack("U*").map{|c|c.chr}.join
```
```
assuming that your text really does fit in the ascii character set.