5 ms·

I agree. The biggest problem with CSV is Excel's terrible support. And while CSV is primarily used for data transfer, Excel could hypothetically be a great deb

I agree. The biggest problem with CSV is Excel's terrible support. And while CSV is primarily used for data transfer, Excel could hypothetically be a great debug-viewer if it didn't do brain dead stuff like unrecoverably corrupt UPCs and other long numbers by default. There's an Excel Uservoice about this very issue from 2015: https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304921-excel-for-windows-desktop-application/suggestions/10374741-stop-excel-from-changing-large-numbers-actually?page=8&per_page=20 https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304921-excel-for-windows-... They're "looking into it." Just as they've been looking into it for the last twenty years. Any. Day. Now.

infogulch 8y ago
Excel's braindead csv corruption is why I never use it for csv now. Add guids to the list of things it can corrupt. (if the first group is numeric it parses as an expression which then causes an error because the next group has hex digits, what!?) Also any long string that happens to only be digits. And two numbers separated by a "/". It's so bad I check any csv file I get if it's been opened in Excel, and if I find any evidence that it has I reject it and make whoever I got it from give me the original source, or transform it with literally any other tool.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
PakG1 8y ago
I was surprised by how bad Microsoft's CSV support is in Excel. So much that I use Numbers or text editors for everything CSV, never do I use Excel. Excel is still great for a basic level of intensive data analysis though, so can't get away from it.
paulryanrogers 8y ago
IIRC there is a hack where you put a single quote after the comma and Excel will treat it as a string. Unfortunately it doesn't help exporting to unknown systems which l likely don't do the same.
tomc1985 8y ago
Fix it so now its easier for customers to not use Excel? Heretic!

infogulch 8y ago

Excel's braindead csv corruption is why I never use it for csv now. Add guids to the list of things it can corrupt. (if the first group is numeric it parses as an expression which then causes an error because the next group has hex digits, what!?) Also any long string that happens to only be digits. And two numbers separated by a "/". It's so bad I check any csv file I get if it's been opened in Excel, and if I find any evidence that it has I reject it and make whoever I got it from give me the original source, or transform it with literally any other tool.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

PakG1 8y ago

I was surprised by how bad Microsoft's CSV support is in Excel. So much that I use Numbers or text editors for everything CSV, never do I use Excel. Excel is still great for a basic level of intensive data analysis though, so can't get away from it.

paulryanrogers 8y ago

IIRC there is a hack where you put a single quote after the comma and Excel will treat it as a string. Unfortunately it doesn't help exporting to unknown systems which l likely don't do the same.

tomc1985 8y ago

Fix it so now its easier for customers to not use Excel? Heretic!