Forum Discussion
How to get Excel to use Automatic Data Conversion settings
Hello, I have been losing data unwittingly because Excel is automatically converting my .csv data into dates without telling me. I have specifically deselected all of the options for enabling aut...
Consider this as a workaround:
- Import Using Power Query
This gives you full control over how each column is interpreted:
- Go to Data > Get Data > From File > From Text/CSV.
- In the preview window, click Transform Data.
- Set the column type to Text before loading.
- Open the File in Notepad First (I am always use!)
- Open the .csv in Notepad or another text editor.
- Save it with a different extension (e.g., .txt).
- In Excel, use Data > Get External Data > From Text.
- Use the Text Import Wizard to manually set each column to Text.
- Use Excel’s “Text to Columns” Tool
If the file is already open and data has been converted:
- Select the affected column.
- Go to Data > Text to Columns.
- Choose Delimited, then set the column format to Text.