Guides

CSV guides

Each guide comes from a test you can repeat: the files are here to download, and every screenshot has a link that opens the same example in CSVLane.

How to open a CSV fileAny spreadsheet or text editor opens a CSV. What differs is which values get converted on the way in. Six routes compared on one test file.Keep leading zeros in Excel when you open a CSVThe zeros are still in the CSV until Excel converts the column. Import as text, and if the file has already been saved, find every changed cell by comparing it with the original.CSV vs CSV UTF-8The commas are identical. The difference is how accented letters become bytes, and three bytes at the start of the file. Four test files show it byte by byte.How to convert text to CSVFive TXT layouts run through a converter: three work in one step, two need a small fix first, and one of those a tool cannot guess.What a CSV validator catches: ten broken filesTen files with one fault each, run through CSVLane and Python’s strict reader. The results include two faults neither reports, and what to do about them.How to compare two Excel filesUse Spreadsheet Compare for formulas and formatting; save each sheet as CSV and match by ID when rows have moved. A re-sorted test file shows why: 24 position differences against 4 real ones.