Excel 365 (EU) CSV Export on MacOS

This worked, but still demonstrates a lack of a basic feature within excel, which is present in Windows version of the app.

Open a terminal within MacOS and type:

defaults write com.microsoft.Excel CSVDecimalSeparator -string ”.”
defaults write com.microsoft.Excel CSVListSeparator -string ”,”

Please note the original answer used the same comma for separator and decimal and would make any export with decimals broken. 

1. Quickly export EU format CSV
Steps for correct saving
In Excel:
Click “File” → “Export” → “Change File Type”.
Select “CSV (comma separated) (.csv)”.
Click “Save” → Select in the pop-up dialog box:
Character encoding: Unicode (UTF-8)
Field Separator: Comma
Text qualifier: ”
2. Terminal validation format
bash
# Check file encoding and delimiter
file -I exported_file.csv
head -n1 exported_file.csv | od -c
3. Solve common garbled code problems
 Force UTF-8 with BOM
powershell
# Convert via PowerShell (Mac requires PowerShell Core)
Get-Content -Path “input.csv” | Out-File -FilePath “output.csv” -Encoding utf8BOM
4. Replace the separator
bash
# Convert semicolons to commas (for European formats)
iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 input.csv | tr ';' ',' > output.csv
5. Automated Scripting Programs
AppleScript automated export
applescript
tell application “Microsoft Excel”
  set csvFormat to CSV file format
  set csvFormat's TextFileCommaDelimiter to true
  save workbook as filename “output.csv” file format csvFormat
end tell
6. Python Precision Control
Python
import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_excel(“input.xlsx”)
df.to_csv(“output.csv”, sep=“,”, encoding=“utf-8-sig”, quotechar='"', index=False)
7. System level region settings
 Temporarily switch the region format
bash
# Temporarily set to EU region before exporting
defaults write -g AppleLocale en_GB
8. Modify Excel defaults
bash
# Force Excel to use comma separators
defaults write com.microsoft.Excel CSVDecimalSeparator -string ”,”
defaults write com.microsoft.Excel CSVListSeparator -string ”,”