CSV file format is very popular and seems simple, but there are a few caveats causing issues.
Region Setting
CSV format does not define a format for Date and Number values and when a CSV file is opened using Excel values are interpreted according to your current region. Kneip is based in Luxembourg, Porto, and United Kingdom and only a small number of files originate from the United States. Unfortunately, Region on Windows defaults to United States. Before working with CSV files please make sure your Region in Windows is not set to "United States".
- Select "Start" > Settings > Time & Language > Language & Region.
- Under Country or region, select "United Kingdom".
This will allow date "5/2/2024" to be interpreted as "5 Feb 2024" not as "2 May 2024".
Character Encoding
Please prefer utf-8 encoding when creating new files.
CSV Editor
Please do not use Excel to modify CSV files. Dates, numbers will most likely be in a different format after you save the file. If you need to edit a CSV file please use an editor aware of the CSV format:
• on macOS Easy CSV Editor is a great choice
• on Windows you can use Notepad++ with CSV plugin
Opening CSV file in Excel
All CSV files created by Dataglide (and substantial part of files we receive) use utf-8 encoding without BOM.
When you open a file like this directly in Excel you will see Mojibake due to the fact that Excel assumes a file without BOM would be using Windows-1252 codepage.
Do not double click on a .csv file to open it in Excel. Instead please do the following:
- Open Excel
- From the menu select File > New, then click on Blank workbook
- Click on the Data tab
- Click Get External Data From Text
- Navigate to the CSV-formatted file saved on your system, select it, then click Import (When browsing to find the file, set browser to look for All Files or for Text Files)
- This will open the Text Import Wizard
- Select options as required including correct Delimiter, Encoding, then click Next