Preserving text when opening csv files with Excel

0
votes

I have a CSV file to examine. By default it opens with Microsoft Excel. There are a couple fields which I am having problems with. One is a case number (like 1413212331, all digits). Another is a date such as 07/04/2020.

Excel is displaying the case numbers as something like 1.413e+9, and the date as 7/4/2020. I really need to see them in their original format.

I selected the column with the case number and did a format cells - text but it kept the value as it is. And I can't really format the date columns as a specific format, as some might be like 7/4/2020 and some as 07/04/2020.

So is there some other app to look at a CSV file with (other than word/notepad which does not do the lines very well)? Or a way to open a CSV file with Excel and have it treat everything as actual text as it is in the file?

1
csvformat

1 Answers

1
votes

Maybe Libre Office Calc could work. I created a .csv file to test it just with the 2 following lines (tabulation seperated):

05/04/2020    15545789
03/04/2020    78954566

And I opened it with Libre Office Calc (specifying tabulation separation) and kept the right format for the number and date.

But I think that if Excel read your 1413212331 as 1.413e+9 and that cell format does not allow you to see all digits, it might be because your csv file is not formatted as you think. So what is the format of your data in the csv file ? Maybe you could show an example with a copy/paste of a line