Re:A love letter to the CSV format
by Suppafly on Wednesday March 26, 2025 @02:53PM
(#43485536)
This, it's dumb but Excel handles csv way better if you 'import' it vs just opening it. I use excel to quickly preview csv files, but never to edit them unless I'm OK only ever using it in Excel afterwards.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Even in that case I'd be hesitant to open a CSV file in excel. The problem is that it will automatically apply whatever transformation it thinks is appropriate the moment you open the file. Have a digit string that isn't semantically a number? Too bad, it's a number now, and we're gonna go ahead and round it. You didn't really need _all_ of the digits of that insurance policy number, did you?
They did finally add options to turn off the common offenders, but I have a deeply ingrained distrust at this point.