Forum Discussion
Saved CSV opens with dates even when saved as text
Hi, New to the page, have a problem with a CSV file that has hyphenated numbers which turns into dates when opened after being saved as text. How do I make sure that the changes made in the columns...
Start by disabling all the "Automatic Data Conversion" options and try again!
As a general comment, it's not wise to not open a CSV file directly in Excel as Excel will try to be smart and guess what your textual data is about, often leading to undesired results.
Best to import a CSV via Power Query (Data ribbon, Get & Transform Data, From Text/CSV)
...... so that you have full control over the how the texts are transformed into numbers, dates or just stay plain texts. Alternatively, you can use the text-to-columns feature, also from the Data ribbon in the 'Data Tools' group, though it's not as sophisticated as Powe Query.