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default setting to correctly open a csv file

Anonymous
2023-09-06T11:52:10+00:00

Hi there,

I'm trying to open a csv file in excel, but the columns are messed up, and I cannot fix it so there is a clear overview of data for every specific column.

I have tried to select a column (and not selecting at all); went to data and then text to with comma, but nothing changes.

This always happens, and i want to know if there is a default setting that i can change, so i can directly import the csv file and all columns are correct.

Thanks in advance!

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Settings

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-09-06T13:55:27+00:00

    they are downloaded from a research platform as a csv file, i am not creating them myself.

    when i asked someone else to download the data, this will just correctly show everything like it is supposed to.

    i provided screenshots of my settings:

    the internet also said to select: ignore applications that use DDE ( but i don't know if this is correct and it didn't change anything before)

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  2. DaveM121 811.9K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2023-09-07T07:41:56+00:00

    Click your Start Button, then without doing anything else, just type control

    In the resulting list you should see the old Control Panel, open that

    At the top of the old Control Panel, set View to icons

    You should then see the icon for the Region applet, open that.

    Click 'Advanced Settings' please provide a screenshot of the Numbers tab on the resulting dialog.

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  3. DaveM121 811.9K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2023-09-06T12:25:25+00:00

    Hi, I am Dave, I will help you with this.

    It depends on what software was used to create the CSV files, how they are formatted, and what delimiter is used in those files.

    Right click one of those csv files and select Open With - Notepad.

    Please provide a screenshot of that notepad window.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-09-06T12:40:54+00:00

    Hi Dave,

    I could only open the file with wordpad, can I use this or do i need notepad?

    I tried to open a file while notepad was open, but i could not select the csv file from my laptop.

    The photo below is from wordpad.

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  5. DaveM121 811.9K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2023-09-06T12:47:23+00:00

    Thank you for the screenshot, that file does seem to be using the commas the delimiter, but I also see a lot of values separated by a semi-colon

    When you try to open that file, if you set the delimiter to a comma does it not display correctly?

    If there is no private data in that file, can you upload a sample csv file to a cloud service like OneDrive, DropBox... etc.) and provide a share link here, and I will try to find the best method for you to get it to display correctly n Excel.

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