> Unless you instruct it to interpret the field as a string. Except double clicking a CSV does not give you the option to do this. At this point Excel already

> Unless you instruct it to interpret the field as a string. Except double clicking a CSV does not give you the option to do this. At this point Excel already decided to corrupt your data. And guess how most users open CSV files? That's right, they double click. > I'm wondering, if you expect 10 digits and you get less than that, how difficult is it to add some padding zeroes? If you expect 10 digits and get less than that, you have corrupted input data. Trying to "fix" this is exactly the sin excel is committing. Don't do that.