Guide

Why a supplier's CSV opens in one column, and how to fix it in Excel

Updated September 13, 2026. Checked against Microsoft's documentation on that date.

A "comma separated values" file does not always use commas. Open a price list from a European supplier and you may see every row crammed into column A, with semicolons where the columns should be. Send your own CSV to a supplier abroad and they may see the same. Here is why it happens and how to handle the four CSV problems that show up most with price lists.

Problem 1: the file uses semicolons

Excel does not always write commas into a CSV. Microsoft's documentation says Excel uses the Windows list separator character as the delimiter when opening or saving a .csv file, and that the comma is the default for the US English locale. In locales where the decimal symbol is a comma, so that 12,50 means twelve and a half, a comma cannot also separate columns, and those systems typically use a semicolon as the list separator. Their "CSV" files come out with semicolons, and your US Excel reads them as one column.

Fix when opening: do not double-click the file. Use Data, From Text/CSV, and in the preview set the delimiter to Semicolon. Excel usually detects it, but check. While you are there, set the product code column to Text so codes keep their zeros; see how to keep leading zeros.

Fix when saving for someone else: ask what separator their system expects. If you must change your own default, it lives in Windows Region settings: Additional settings, then the List separator box. Microsoft warns that this changes the separator for every program on the computer, so change it back afterwards.

Problem 2: accented names come out as garbage

A description such as "Crème brûlée mix" arrives as "CrÃ¨me brÃ»lÃ©e". That is an encoding mismatch: the file is UTF-8, and Excel read it as an older code page. Microsoft's guidance is that a UTF-8 CSV opens correctly when it was saved with a BOM (byte order mark). When you save from Excel, choose the format named CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) rather than plain CSV, and the BOM is written for you. When you receive a file that shows garbage, import it through Data, From Text/CSV and set the file origin to Unicode (UTF-8).

Problem 3: only one sheet was saved

Every CSV variant in Excel saves only the active sheet. Microsoft's file format list says so for each one. If a supplier's workbook has a sheet per category and they save it as CSV, you get one category, and no error message. If the file seems short, ask for the .xlsx.

CSV also drops everything that is not a cell value: number formats, colors, formulas, column widths. A price shown as $1,234.50 may be saved as 1234.5, or as "$1,234.50" with the punctuation inside quotes, depending on how the cell was typed. Either can be read, but you should know which you have before comparing.

Problem 4: quotes, commas in descriptions, and line breaks

A description like Screws, wood, 4x40 contains commas. In a proper CSV it is wrapped in double quotes, and a quote inside it is doubled. Most programs handle this. Problems start when a file was built by hand or by a script that did not quote fields: the description spills into the price column and everything after it shifts one place left. If a price column contains text that looks like part of a description, this is usually what happened. Ask for the file again, or open it in a text editor and look at the row.

The safe routine for any supplier CSV

Import through Data, From Text/CSV. Never double-click.
Check the delimiter and the file origin in the preview.
Set code and barcode columns to Text.
Check the row count against what the supplier said they sent.
Then compare.