I posted this the last time there was a discussion about CSV and excel: If you are generating the CSV yourself, save yourself some agony and just wrap the text

I posted this the last time there was a discussion about CSV and excel: If you are generating the CSV yourself, save yourself some agony and just wrap the text in ="" $ cat test.csv ="12.34567890124312341234123412341234",="1-5" $ open -a Microsoft\ Excel test.csv https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5514587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5514587 Explanation: It uses another auto trick: if the leading character is '=', the result is treated as a formula. Thus, you can actually write formulas in your CSV and excel will interpret appropriately: $ cat test.csv =1+1,="1-5" $ open -a Microsoft\ Excel test.csv You should see the value '2' (with content `=1+1`) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5514704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5514704