Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, and 2013. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Comma-Delimited and MS-DOS CSV Variations.
Steve notes that Excel allows saving a worksheet in several different CSV formats. He understands the differences between most of the variants, but he's at a loss as to the difference between the "CSV (Comma delimited)" and "CSV (MS-DOS)" formats.
For most people there is very little difference between these two versions. (There are much bigger differences between these versions and the Macintosh CSV version, which Excel also supports.) The reason is that there is little difference between what the two formats create. With most data, you could create a file in the two formats and compare them byte-for-byte and find no differences.
The difference between the two is important, however, if you have certain special characters in text fields; for example, an accented (foreign language) character. If you export as Windows CSV, those fields are encoded using the Windows-1252 code page. DOS encoding usually uses code page 437, which maps characters used in old pre-Windows PCs. If you export as one and then import with a tool that expects the other, most things will look fine but you'll get unexpected results if, for example, you know someone with an umlaut (or other foreign character) in their name.
Essentially, CSV comma delimited is used by Windows and CSV MS-DOS is used by older DOS-based operating systems and you would rarely encounter issues except in the circumstances outlined above.
Additional information on code pages can be found at this Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (9508) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, and 2013. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Comma-Delimited and MS-DOS CSV Variations.
Save Time and Supercharge Excel! Automate virtually any routine task and save yourself hours, days, maybe even weeks. Then, learn how to make Excel do things you thought were simply impossible! Mastering advanced Excel macros has never been easier. Check out Excel 2010 VBA and Macros today!
You can use a macro to read information from a text file. The steps are easy, and then you can use that information in ...
Discover MoreWhen you open a workbook in Excel, the Open dialog box always starts within the folder in which you were last working. ...
Discover MoreWhen you save a workbook to disk, you may want to automatically save a duplicate workbook in a separate location. This ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
2017-11-06 13:41:23
Philip
So what about the Mac CSV format ... how is that different then ?
2014-10-14 05:15:06
Barry
Good tip
2014-10-13 08:02:58
k.prashanth kumar
excel file as CSV (Comma Separated Value MS-DOS)
2014-08-04 12:38:03
Lillian
Very good! I got my question answered clearly.
Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2019 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, and 2013. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: 
Comments