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I'm not sure why, but since a few days ago when I import a .csv it is adding a "=" infront of cells which begin with an @.

It should be like this:

enter image description here

But now it is doing this:

enter image description here

I've compared all my settings to a machine that can open it up fine and it's identical really. It's also same version of Office.

karel
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Ed Briscoe
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  • Did you set the type of that column on import? – Seth Jan 08 '20 at 11:35
  • Excel does weird automatic things when you open .csv files in it. Can you Paste the info in instead and use the import wizard (comma delimiter) to set that column to text? – Smock Jan 08 '20 at 12:29
  • It worked fine when I left it as 'general' for column data format, but now I need to select 'text' for it to work. Seems to happen on a few other machines now also. I have to do this a few times a day. – Ed Briscoe Jan 08 '20 at 13:55
  • I can't copy and paste from notepad, it just formats it all as 1 column when there should be 20+ – Ed Briscoe Jan 08 '20 at 13:56
  • @Smock the rule is known so that behavior is predictable and not weird at all – phuclv Jan 09 '20 at 03:30
  • @phuclv That's just one particular automatic rule among many. Just because the rule(s) are known (to some), does not make them any less weird! – Smock Jan 09 '20 at 09:46

1 Answers1

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Excel's default and preferred character for starting a formula is =. However Lotus 1–2–3 uses + or - and Apple Works uses @ so Excel also supports them for compatibility

That means if the cell starts with any of the +-=@ characters you'll get a formula. To prevent that from happening prepend ' at the start of the cell. Or force Excel to recognize the formula column as text by selecting Data > Get External Data > From Text, open your CSV file and select the desired type in Text Import Wizard

For more information read

phuclv
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