Hi guys,
I'm taking first baby steps with Anki (on Linux) as a complement. I exported the words from a section of a list into a CSV file (from the list menu, not from 'my words'), and now I'm trying to import the CSV, but Anki says 'Unknown file format' and refuses to import the list; it's the same when I make a txt out of it and retry. How can I get these words into my deck?

use quizlet instead of anki. its free and works fine. they even have their own iphone app!
great stuff!

Open it in Excel first. If Excel gives you nonsense, open it first in notepad, then copy it to Excel, then separate the partitions manually using "text to columns," save it as an Excel file, and then try it again in ANKI.

When using text to columns use an actual delimiter, not fixed width. The limiter will usually be a quotation mark.

I think the problem with your excel file is that excel doesn't use UTF8, and you need UTF8 to import into Anki. Your text file should work however, if you save it as "Unicode (UTF8)" encoding with ms word.

There are workarounds for excel files - see http://ankisrs.net/docs/manual.html#spreadsheets-and-utf-8 but I think going to word files is easier.

Thanks achromatize, my spreadsheet showed that the columns didn't make sense. Now it works :)
Thanks for the other suggestions too, guys!