You have come to the right place if you are looking for the answer or some unique tips to fix the issue that the CSV file is not opening correctly in Excel. There are several ways to open a CSV file in Excel correctly. This article will walk you through each and every step with appropriate examples. As a result, you can use them easily for your purpose. Let’s move on to the article’s main discussion. Show
4 Cases of CSV File Not Opening Correctly in Excel and Their SolutionsIn this section, I will show you some quick and easy methods to solve the issue that the CSV file is not opening correctly in Excel on the Windows operating system. This article contains detailed explanations with clear illustrations for everything. I have used the Microsoft 365 version here. However, you may use any other version depending on your availability. Please leave a comment if any part of this article does not work in your version. Case 1: CSV File Is Opening in One ColumnWhen we open a CSV file in Excel, that file may not be distributed to the columns. This happens when the delimiter is not properly set up. In this section, we will see probable solutions to the issue: Excel is opening CSV files in one column.
Now, let us demonstrate the possible solutions to this problem. Solution 1: Change Regional Settings In the first solution, we will change the regional settings from the Control Panel. Mainly, we will change the list separator from semicolon (;) to comma (,). We will be using Windows 10 to demonstrate this process. However, it should be similar to other versions of Windows. 📌 Steps:
Solution 2: Specify Delimiter by Editing the CSV File If Excel can recognize the data separators, it can show them in multiple columns. In order to identify the delimiter in Excel, we will insert a single line in this solution. The syntax is “sep=delimiter”. We have used a tab in our file, so we will need to add a tab in place of the delimiter. 📌 Steps:
Solution 3: Specify Delimiter While Importing CSV File to Excel In this method, we will import the data from the CSV file into Excel. This solution should work if the other two do not work for you. The importing feature of the CSV file is on the Data tab, and from there we will use the From Text/CSV option. 📌 Steps:
Read More: How to Open CSV with Delimiter in Excel (6 Simple Ways) Case 2: Leading Zeros Are Kept While Importing from CSV FileWhen importing CSV files into Excel, the leading zeros in the CSV file are frequently omitted by default. This leads to data misinterpretation in various contexts, such as account numbers, ZIP codes, phone numbers, and so on, where leading zeros convey useful information. Applying the Power Query is one of the most efficient ways to keep the leading zeros in Excel CSV. Let’s familiarize ourselves with the following steps to do this. 📌 Steps:
After importing your CSV file, you will see a preview of your data like the following picture.
Afterward, a Power Query Editor window will be open on your worksheet as shown in the image given below.
At this stage, you will be able to see that zeros in the Account Number column are back as shown in the following image.
There you go! You have successfully imported your CSV file into Excel and kept the leading zeros intact. Read More: How to Import Text File to Excel Automatically (2 Suitable Ways) Similar Readings
Case 3: Dates Are Formatted Incorrectly While Importing from CSV FileWhile importing files containing date values there occurs problems like days and months are mixed up or some values are converted to dates that are actually not date values. There is a quick way to stop Excel from auto-formatting dates in CSV files. For this, follow the steps below: 📌 Steps:
Read More:How to Import CSV into Existing Sheet in Excel (5 Methods) Case 4: Numbers Converted to Scientific NotationSometimes when we try to import a CSV file containing numbers that are of digits of higher numbers, the numbers become converted to scientific notation. Here I will show you how you can avoid this. 📌 Steps:
Read More: How to Convert CSV to XLSX (4 Quick Methods) ConclusionIn this article, you have found how to fix the issue that the CSV file is not opening correctly in Excel. I hope you found this article helpful. You can visit our website, ExcelDemy, to get more Excel-related content. Please leave comments, suggestions, or queries if you have any in the comment section below. Related Articles
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Why does my CSV file look weird?If you have opened a csv file and found weird characters in it, chances are you are using Excel. All of WebCollects exports are in the "UTF8" character set, which covers all international characters correctly. Some versions of Excel have trouble opening csv files that use UTF8 format.
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