diff --git a/gramps/gen/utils/docgen/csvtab.py b/gramps/gen/utils/docgen/csvtab.py
index dd9e3aced..dabbd1591 100644
--- a/gramps/gen/utils/docgen/csvtab.py
+++ b/gramps/gen/utils/docgen/csvtab.py
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ class CSVTab(TabbedDoc):
         else:
             self.filename = filename
 
-        self.f = open(self.filename, "wb")
+        self.f = open(self.filename, "w")
         self.writer = csv.writer(self.f)
 
     def close(self):
diff --git a/gramps/plugins/export/exportcsv.py b/gramps/plugins/export/exportcsv.py
index 208f9f4c6..a206ddbab 100644
--- a/gramps/plugins/export/exportcsv.py
+++ b/gramps/plugins/export/exportcsv.py
@@ -154,15 +154,22 @@ class UnicodeWriter(object):
         self.encoder = codecs.getencoder(encoding)
 
     def writerow(self, row):
-        self.writer.writerow([s.encode('utf-8') for s in row])
-        # Fetch UTF-8 output from the queue ...
-        data = self.queue.getvalue()
-        data = data.decode('utf-8')
+        if sys.version_info[0] < 3:
+            self.writer.writerow([s.encode('utf-8') for s in row])
+            # Fetch UTF-8 output from the queue ...
+            data = self.queue.getvalue()
+            data = data.decode('utf-8')
+        else:
+            self.writer.writerow(row)
+            data = self.queue.getvalue()
+            #in python3, StringIO self.queue returns unicode!
+        #data now contains the csv data in unicode
         # ... and reencode it into the target encoding
         data, length = self.encoder(data)
         # write to the target stream
         self.stream.write(data)
-        # empty queue
+        # empty queue, go to start position, then truncate
+        self.queue.seek(0)
         self.queue.truncate(0)
 
     def writerows(self, rows):