The ‘problem’ encountered is probably due to trying to open a csv (which actually uses ‘,’ to separate the columns) in a European (not UK) , and possibly other country versions of Excel, which expect csv files to use ‘;’ as the separator. The same versions of Excel will also have the thousands and decimals operators swapped as that is how they use them in these countries. The may also be date formatting differences as well.
Rather than double clicking or dropping a csv file onto an open spreadsheet, you can explicitly open it from the Data | From text/csv option. Here you will be shown a preview of the data and given the option to explicitly say which delimiter you wish to use. [cid:[email protected]] If dates are a problem, you can stop excel from trying to interpret your dates by telling it not to automatically detect datatypes. Regards, Peter From: Bianca Peterson via discuss <[email protected]> Sent: 16 July 2018 10:05 To: [email protected] Subject: [discuss] Excel opening .csv files incorrectly Hi everyone, The following is (probably) only for Windows users. I've recently encountered a "problem" at two workshops I co-taught at - most recent version(s) of Excel puts all variables (and data) in a single column, separated by commas (i.e. not splitting on commas). Some participants fixed this manually with Data -> Text to columns. There is a way to fix this in Excel's options: File > Options > Advanced. Un-check the "Use System Separators" within the Editing Options and change the Decimal separator with "." and the Thousands Separator ",". It might be worth adding this as a footnote in the lesson? Kind regards, Bianca Bianca Peterson, Ph.D. Environmental Sciences (Genetics) Post-doctoral Research Fellow: Pharmaceutics Potchefstroom Campus North-West University South Africa 2531 [https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1Ork64iGi2UtUSumuMcP-288GP1Dk__Xq&revid=0B2Bnq3pF2GSNdXRuSTdIT2F3ZC81V2NlcXR0RUVXdHZqZkJBPQ]<https://twitter.com/BinxiePeterson?lang=en> [https://www.linkedin.com/in/bianca-peterson-007b5b117/] <https://www.linkedin.com/in/bianca-peterson-007b5b117/> [https://github.com/BinxiePeterson] <https://github.com/BinxiePeterson> The Carpentries<https://carpentries.topicbox.com/latest> / discuss / see discussions<https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss> + participants<https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/members> + delivery options<https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups> Permalink<https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/T4918aa99c766f7d2-Md8eb7378cc0ffcc0864c1b88> ------------------------------------------ The Carpentries: discuss Permalink: https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/T4918aa99c766f7d2-Mca9b71175bfe01d901946ad6 Delivery options: https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups
