CSV - converting from Excel to CSV

Version 1.9

Welcome. Please choose your application (eg. Excel) and then post your question.

Our Microsoft Certified trainers will then respond within 24 hours (working days).

Support promotion: Post a question within 7 days of attending your course and get an upgrade to 12 months support! (Standard period 3 months)

Frequently Asked Questions
What does 'Resolved' mean?

Any suggestions, questions or comments? Please post in the Improve the forum thread.

CSV - converting from Excel to CSV

Matthew has attended:
Excel Intermediate course

by - delegate Matthew [2 posts] (2008 May 21 Wed, 12:32) Reply

Hi,

Am trying to convert a excel document to CSV. It is not working. It saves a CSV file but is not seperating the columns. Why is this? When converting I get a warning message about not being compatible and possibility of losing data.

Regards

Version	Date	Location	Places available	Book	Next place rate:
Excel Intermediate 1 day course
Version	Date	Location	Places available	Book	Card	Invoice
2002/XP	2008 Aug 29 Fri	Tooting	0	FULL
2003	2008 Sep 2 Tue	Bloomsbury	3	book now	£210	£215
2003	2008 Sep 4 Thu	Bayswater	4	book now	£195	£205
2007	2008 Sep 4 Thu	Bloomsbury	0	FULL
2003	2008 Sep 9 Tue	Bloomsbury	4	book now	£207	£215
2002/XP	2008 Sep 9 Tue	Tooting	0	FULL
Full Schedule: See all 138 Excel Intermediate course dates. Bookings currently available until 25th November 2009.

RE: CSV - converting from Excel to CSV

by - trainer Amanda platinum contributer [947 posts] (2008 May 28 Wed, 16:24) Reply

Hi Martin

Thank you for your question; and welcome to the forum.

The most likely reason that the data is not displaying correctly in columns when you import the CSV file into Excel is that the incorrect delimiter is selected.

There should be an import wizard (3 steps) that comes up on your screen when you open the CSV file in Excel.

At one of the steps (I think the first or second step) there is an option to select which type of delimiter is used to separate the columns from each other. You will need to tick/select the Comma delimiter (the C in CSV stands for comma, the delimiter which is used to separate data between columns).

The message you see about compatibility is just to explain that the CSV file format cannot deal with/display all the features/functions that you have in Excel. For example, the CSV file format cannot store formulas, so it will display the result of a formula as a number in the CSV file. The same applies to most formatting as well (colours, bolding, number formatting etc).

I hope this helps.
Amanda

CSV - converting from Excel to CSV

Related articles

Excel tip:

Remove unused toolbar buttons