Have you received a CSV file and want to briefly check the content before importing it into the target application?
The reflex reaction is to open MS Excel to view the CSV or TSV file. You don't want to waste any time. But often the quick process turns into a stony path, because the following hurdles can make the desired initial analysis in Excel more difficult.
Possible problems when opening a CSV file in Excel
Special CSV formats that do not correspond to the system settings make importing a guessing game.
Umlauts and other special characters are displayed incorrectly as soon as the text encoding is not recognized correctly by Excel.
Things don't get any easier when Excel offers different ways of importing data. If you don't use this on a daily basis, the question will probably arise, how did I do it the last time? Via the 'Open text file', 'Retrieve data' or 'Convert text to columns' function?
With Excel, you can open files with a maximum of 1,048,576 rows or 16,384 columns.
Once you have finally opened the file in Excel, further difficulties are waiting: Excel likes to misinterpret certain content with number combinations. For example, I had the problem that customer or social insurance numbers were incorrectly displayed as date.
Even numerical values are regularly displayed incorrectly, as in practice the decimal separators or the thousands separators often do not match the Excel settings.
Opening and displaying CSV files can be really tedious in MS Excel. Have you had similar experiences with Excel and CSV files? There are certainly other pitfalls.
It is quicker with a good CSV editor or CSV viewer
If you want to open CSV or TSV files easily and view them quickly, it is recommended that you use a dedicated editor. A possible CSV editor is integrated in smasi CSV-Wizard so that you can carry out an initial analysis without any roundabout ways. In the following, I will present the advantages and disadvantages of a good CSV editor or CSV viewer using the smasi CSV Wizard:
Advantages of a CSV editor compared to Excel
As soon as you open a large file, the first thousand lines are displayed by CSV-Wizard within a very short time. Thanks to this, you can examine the format and the first part of the content without long waiting times, while the rest of the content is read in the background. It's practical, isn't it?
The CSV format is usually determined correctly automatically. If this is not the case, you can define the configuration manually when opening the file if necessary. No changes to any regional settings are necessary for this.
Content is always displayed unaltered. The data is displayed exactly as it is in the file. Even multi-line texts can be displayed correctly. This guarantees that you can analyze the existing content correctly.
As soon as you use the CSV Wizard editor, you can call up the practical functions for editing the data directly. You will be guided step by step through the chosen function. Smart and simple.
Disadvantages of a CSV editor compared to Excel
Microsoft Excel is often directly available on the respective end devices with Office 365. If you use an external CSV editor, you must first install the program. You can download the smasi CSV Wizard securely and easily at any time from the Mac App Store or the Microsoft Store.
A CSV editor generally does not include as many calculation and transformation functions as Excel. It also lacks formatting functions because the CSV file format does not allow formatting. However, all these many Excel functions are often not needed for an initial analysis.
In my opinion, the pros of a CSV editor or CSV viewer clearly outweigh the cons. You just have to overcome the initial barrier to find and install a suitable CSV editor. After that, you are guaranteed to be spared a lot of trouble.
It is therefore worth trying out the smasi CSV-Wizard.