Improvements in how CSV File Saves are Handled in Excel

Microsoft have this month released an update which addresses a small, yet incredibly annoying ‘feature’ when working with csv files in Excel. Read on to learn more.

Anyone who has worked with Excel to any major extent has come across this nuance;

You open a csv file in Excel – or perhaps you save a new file as a csv file, accepting Microsoft’s warning about feature loss by saving as csv.

You make a few more changes, and need to save it again…

What’s this… another warning about saving as a csv

Of course we’re sure – it’s already a csv file!

The request for Microsoft to address this quirk was the second highest voted request on Microsoft’s UserVoice site

But hurrah!

The in latest builds of Excel 2016, this has been improved

Now, you will instead see what Mircosoft refer to as a ‘Business Bar’ highlighting that if you continue using the csv file format, you risk losing data

This alone is a much better approach – far less intrusive, yet still ensuring those who might be less familiar with csv files are not put at risk.

But, clicking the ‘Don’t show again’ button does exactly as you might expect – it removes the bar permanently.

And your request to not show the bar is application-wide, so you’ll no longer be asked if you’re sure you want to save as csv again.

As with other such enhancements, this will only benefit users on an Office 365 subscription. Although the change was only announced today, we’re told it was actually released mid-August, so if you’re on o365 there’s a good chance you already have this (as was the case for me)

Business Subscriptions tend to take a little longer to receive changes, but hopefully won’t be long.