The specific import process isn't some sort of esoteric process. It is the data import wizard. Also as I said if you are regularly importing data from a file with the same format writing some VBA to do so is pretty quick and simple task.

Also your data isn't gone. It is still in the CSV file you imported it from. Re-import it.

I would wager more people open a CSV by double-clicking on it rather than using the import data wizard. And even if you use the wizard it takes extra work to specify the type of each column, which most people won't bother with.

Writing some VBA is a simple process if you're a programmer. I wonder how many genetic researchers fit that description?

P.S. when I said "too late to fix it", I meant by some process within Excel. Of course you can re-import the original file, but maybe you only notice the problem after you've done a lot of work with it?

Expecting you to learn the basics about the tools you're using is not expecting too much. And if you are too lazy to spend a few seconds specifying data types then you get what you deserve.

> Expecting you to learn the basics about the tools you're using is not expecting too much.

Do you/have you worked in a corporate environment? You seem to have an idealistic view about how end users are expected to use Excel.

I worked in corporate environments for decades.

The original comment I responded to said they regularly imported large data sets and the in the case of the genetists they also are regularly importing data into Excel. In other words Excel is a regularly used and fundamental tool to their work. In this case I would expect someone to learn the basics of using it. Just as I would expect a developer to learn their editor, build system, version control system, etc.

Excel chews up CSVs that it opens. I know this because an accountant checked each file our code produced using Excel before trying to import it into another program. We proofread our code before we realizing the problem was somewhere else. Shoulder-surfed the process, found the giant bug with a green X on it.

It's no better at exporting to CSV. I wrote a CSV parser a few years ago that had one set of logic for Excel CSVs and a completely different set for everything else.

Excel doesn't change CSV files when it imports them. If the imported file was being changed then the user was saving back to the same file they imported from.

This information doesn't help anyone.

The fact is the person was double-clicking a file in a list to view its contents and Excel was trampling it. Nobody in their right mind will waste time to open Excel first, use import feature, re-navigate to the file they were already looking at, and go through the import dialog just to see what's inside.

Trampling it to me implies that Excel was somehow modifying the contents of the file. Which it doesn't do by double clicking on the file and just viewing it. Do you mean that the data shown in Excel wasn't what was expected because of the auto data conversion?

Believe me, I was blown away just the same. And it's not like the accountant clicked a save button of a on-close dialog, no. Opening a CSV file was enough.

I first used Excel on Windows 3.1 and over the decades since have opened countless CSV files with it. I have never observed this behavior.