Trouble With Opening CSV Files With Excel? The Comma and Semicolon Issue in Excel Due to Regional Settings for Europe
UPDATE: You can now try to select the file delimiter on the field mapping step!
If you change to a semicolon and the file is still not being processed correctly you can try the other solutions below, or contact us in the help chat.
When uploading standard CSV (Comma Separated Values) files, you may find the Replyify did not recognize the fields and simply displays all data in the first column or displays an error.
For system integrity, a .csv file is the only file type we can accept.
The Problem
The standard field delimiters for CSV files are commas:
,
On non-European versions of Excel, the comma is set as default for the "List Separator", which is okay for CSV files. But on European Windows versions this character is reserved as the Decimal Symbol and the "List Separator" is set by default to the semicolon:
;
There are Six Solutions depending on your preferences:
1) Make sure you are saving and selecting filetype: .csv and not just changing the file extension from .xls to .csv
2) If you're on a Mac, try saving from Numbers instead of Excel.
3) Add an extra line to your CSV file to tell Excel what the separator is. In a text editor (like TextWrangler etc) add the following line to the top of your CSV file above your column headers (include the quotes):
"sep=;"
Open the file in Excel and Save it.
4) Upload your file to google sheets, and export as a .csv
5) Change the CSV file extension to TXT (when you open a TXT file with Excel it will start the text file import wizard where you can choose the delimiter) -- or --
In your CSV file(s), use a text editor to replace all commas,with semicolons;-- or --
6) In your Windows Control Panel, you can change your Regional and Language settings. Now, when you open a CSV file in Excel it will automatically find the data fields and open it appropriately.
