Editing Comparison of common data file formats (section)

=== CSV Files ===
CSV files: different field values are separated by commas.
The CSV format itself has no row limit — the limit comes from the software used to open it.<ref>Row Zero — CSV Row Limits by Spreadsheet: https://rowzero.com/blog/csv-row-limit</ref>

Common issues arise because most people open CSV files with Microsoft Excel: (1) '''Garbled Chinese characters''': double-clicking may result in garbled text; a BOM character needs to be prepended to the file, or the file must be imported rather than opened directly. (2) '''Newline characters in field values''': if a field value contains a newline, Excel tends to misinterpret it, causing data from the same record to appear on the next row and resulting in column misalignment. (3) '''Forced type conversion''': a common issue is that the leading zero of a phone number is dropped because the value is coerced into an integer.

If you receive a CSV file containing newline characters in field values, it is not recommended to use Excel; use LibreOffice Calc instead.