Excel csv file semicolon

Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 11 years, 4 months ago. Active 9 years, 6 months ago. Viewed k times. I don't have an English setup available for tests, users have reported the behavior I tried to change the list separator value in Windows regional settings, but that didn't change anything.

Improve this question. Holgerwa Holgerwa 1, 4 4 gold badges 13 13 silver badges 14 14 bronze badges. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Those files are distributed? Locally generated? Improve this answer.

I was hoping that there is some formatting for CSV-files that makes them internationally usable, but if that's not possible, XLS-files will work no matter where. How is this the correct answer, it is useless.

Terrible answer - see the other upvoted answer. Is ther a list of other such settings? Telling Excel to use , as the decimal separator usually goes along with telling it to use ; as the column separator.

Once the delimiter is defined, you can open your text file in Excel like you normally would, from Excel itself or from Windows Explorer. For example, to correctly open a semicolon delimited CSV in Excel, we explicitly indicate that the field separator is a semicolon:. Another way to handle a csv file with a delimiter different from the default one is to import the file rather than open.

Beginning with Excel , the wizard is removed from the ribbon as a legacy feature. However, you can still make use of it:. In step 2 of the wizard, you are suggested to choose from the predefined delimiters tab, comma, semicolon, or space or specify your custom one:. Microsoft Excel and higher provides one more easy way to import a csv file - by connecting to it with the help of Power Query.

When creating a Power Query connection, you can choose the delimiter in the Preview dialog window:. To change the default List separator not only for Excel but for all programs installed on your computer, here's what you need to do:. For this change to work, the List separator should not be the same as Decimal symbol.

Click OK twice to close both dialog boxes. When done, restart Excel, so it can pick up your changes. Before changing the List separator on your machine, I encourage you to carefully read this section, so you fully understand possible outcomes.

First off, it should be noted that depending on the country Windows uses different default separators. It's because large numbers and decimals are written in different ways across the globe. When a CSV file is opened in excel application, you can see all the rows get delimited by comma automatically and you get data in the desired format in excel. It is because excel application uses comma as default delimiter which is configured at Windows level, all Windows applications including Excel uses this default delimiter.

But what when your CSV file contains data which is separated by other than comma. The CSV file will be displayed incorrectly while opening in excel. All the data will be displayed in the first column and you will have to use text to column feature to delimit data. Details required :. Cancel Submit. Clear the check box 'Use system settings'. Set 'Decimal separator' to a point dot , and 'Thousands separator' to a comma. Click OK. Export to CSV.

Tick the check box 'Use system settings'. How satisfied are you with this reply? Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.