Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. 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.

Comma-Delimited and MS-DOS CSV Variations

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 23, 2024)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021


4

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:

https://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, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Comma-Delimited and MS-DOS CSV Variations.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Advanced Filtering

Many people know how to use AutoFilter, but there are times when you need some more filtering muscle. Here's how you can ...

Discover More

Getting Help Offline

Word provides two different sources from which you can get help—either online or offline. By default, Word uses the ...

Discover More

Converting Forced Text to Numbers

If you have some numbers stored in cells that are formatted as text, you may get some surprises when you try to use those ...

Discover More

Solve Real Business Problems Master business modeling and analysis techniques with Excel and transform data into bottom-line results. This hands-on, scenario-focused guide shows you how to use the latest Excel tools to integrate data from multiple tables. Check out Microsoft Excel 2013 Data Analysis and Business Modeling today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Creating a CSV File

Need to get your data into a format that can be easily read by other programs? Chances are good that a simple CSV file ...

Discover More

Invalid Names when Opening Workbook

Don't you hate opening a workbook and seeing error messages? If you see a message that some "invalid names" were detected ...

Discover More

Renaming a Workbook

Renaming a workbook from within Excel can seem daunting, but it is actually quite easy. All you need to do is use the ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 6 + 3?

2023-05-06 10:41:08

Ajay Kapoor

I prepared about 80 files in Excel 365 for the employees, showing their Member ID, Month/Year, Wages. Pension etc and converted it into comma seperated CSV(MS-DOS) excel file. Then it was opened in notepad. Then all "," was replaced with " #~#" as per requirement. All the files were saved and successfully uploaded against their name on employer PF site. While approving with DSE all files were approved except six file showing error " Error while approving file. Plese try again" The process of approval was repeated with these six file again and again but failed. Please help to resolve this issue.


2021-02-06 16:31:10

Profesor Yeow

Thanks for this. I never know about CP437.. and it's very useful for convert to UTF-8


2020-03-27 12:50:05

Gonzalo

Hi Allen

I've tried saving a CSV (Windows) in Excel for Mac, and it doesn't change the encoding (it still uses MacRoman), the difference is the newline characters. Can you verify that?

I've tried also using a macro, saving the file with the xlCSVWindows FileFormat and got the same result: MacRoman encoding.


2020-03-02 05:33:42

Richard Curtis

A database app that I use expects a CSV file in UTF-8 format. I use Excel to create such CSVs but how can I get Excel to save in this format by default?


This Site

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.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.