在PHP 5.5中读取带有重音字符的Excel文件

I'm trying to read a .xls file and at the most basic level output the text from it in the browser.

Some of this text contains accented characters. How do I get php to output them correctly in the browser? At the moment "é" comes out as "�"

I tried this in the php:

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');

And I have this in the HTML:

<meta charset="utf-8" />

But neither work for me. Thank you

The solution was in a patch that was released for the php Excel Reader library I was using. The original package with the patch applied is located here:

https://code.google.com/p/php-excel-reader/issues/attachmentText?id=31&aid=-3428128595755429966&name=excel_reader2+patch+applied.php&token=ABZ6GAd2_c1FJQBL6bZW02ks70TIMpdLsQ%3A1426153218771