$filename = $_GET['file'];
        $ext = $_GET['type'];
        $filename .= '.' . $ext;
        $path = "../generatedReports/" . $filename;
        header('Content-type: application/vnd.ms-excel;');
        header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=' . $filename);
        header("Pragma: public");
        header("Expires: 0");
        header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
        header("Cache-Control: public", false);
        header("Content-Description: File Transfer");
        header("Accept-Ranges: bytes");
        header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
        header("Content-Length: " . filesize($path));
        $size = filesize($path);
        $f = fopen($path, 'r');
        $content = fread($f, $size);
        echo $content;

echo unicode2utf8(hexdec("00CE")); // Result: Î

// Or the function that will recognize U+ in front of string, and will skip it to show the character
function unicodeCodePointToChar($str) {
    if (substr($str,0,2) != "U+") return $str;
    $str = substr($str,2); // Skip U+
    return unicode_to_utf8(array(hexdec($str)));
}
echo unicodeCodePointToChar("U+00CE"); // Result: Î

$filename = $_GET['file'];
            $ext = $_GET['type'];
            $filename .= '.' . $ext;
            $path = "../generatedReports/" . $filename;
            header('Content-type: application/vnd.ms-excel;');
            header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=' . $filename);
            header("Pragma: public");
            header("Expires: 0");
            header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
            header("Cache-Control: public", false);
            header("Content-Description: File Transfer");
            header("Accept-Ranges: bytes");
            header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
            ob_clean();   // discard any data in the output buffer (if possible)
            flush();      // flush headers (if pos
            readfile($path);