No more warnings about saving as CSV, especially when I didn't change anything
I don't know how many hundreds (thousands?) of times I've told Excel that, yes, I really truly do mean to save this file as a CSV. I recognize that not all users will understand that CSV doesn't do cool formulas or formatting, etc., but I do and I still want to do it. And I want to do it a lot. Please, give me a way to opt out of these useless warnings!
Tom VanAntwerp
shared this idea
2016-09-07
We’re done – you should no longer get a warning dialog about data loss when saving a file as CSV, as long as the file was originally opened as a CSV file.
Instead, we’ve added a non-intrusive business bar (that you can ignore if you choose) that let’s you quickly Save As the file if you have made changes that are not savable in CSV; if you ignore it and just Save, we’ll just save out the CSV values as you’d expect.
We actually rolled this out starting on August 13, 2016 with build 16.0.7167.2040 for O365 users. Later builds have this update as well of course.
Thanks for participating in UserVoice – we definitely value your input. You can now use whatever votes you’d allocated for this idea for other ideas.
Cheers,
Dan [MS]
= started status 2016-06-15 =
Great news – we’re working on this (for both Windows and Mac Excel)
Cheers,
Dan [MS]
older
Thanks for the suggestion Tom, and thanks to folks for voting! We’re listening to you all, and we’ll get someone to take a look at the flow here. We’ll loop back and update the status appropriately.
Best,
John [MS XL]
98 comments
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Steve
commented
WOW! way to fix it for 1 person but break it for hundreds of others. AND, when something used to work a certain way but changes please don't tell anyone it's going to change so they lose hours of work!
would it have been that difficult to just do what the guy was asking and allow them to turn off the notifications if they want to?
very frustrated :(
will edit csv with different tool. -
Anonymous
commented
Yes, this is a poor fix. I also need to redo work. I'd like to highlight that Tom's request specifically requested a way to "opt out" and not a "non-intrusive business bar"—whatever that is
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Ignacio Ortiz
commented
I'm with everyone when they say this was sub-optimal way to tackle this. If there are "Subtle" warnings, I've seen none. I know this can be tackled with training, but not everyone should know what a CSV file is, and I'm a strong believer that they shouldn't have to care about something like this.
Awful end-user experience, not everyone using the MS products are tech-savvy and you should be aiming towards business and front line users that shouldn't have to worry.
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Q
commented
If I may, to all the people that are concerned that they lost/will lose data, check File -> Options -> Save. Excel, by default, automatically saves a copy every 10 minutes as an xlsx, regardless of what format you are working on. I don't know what the overwrite policy, so you may have a limited number of times to realize there's a problem, but if you close the file, then realize it was a csv after all that work was done, there's an xlsx copy in your appdata folder. QYB
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Ben Goldberg
commented
This would have been an OK change, if and only if you gave a warning dialog about data loss the *first* time you add a formula or formatting or other non-CSV-saveable- changes to a file opened as a CSV.
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Ron
commented
This is a suboptimal fix. The ideal behavior would be that when Excel detects that the user has used functionality that will be lost (e.g. formulas or filters) then it will prompt the user with a warning. To appease the people that don't want the warning they could tick, "Do not show this warning again", and be rid of it forever.
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Mark Tillotson
commented
Add my voice to all the others complaining that this 'fix' is not a good idea. The unintended loss of work far outweighs the inconvenience of having to click an 'are you sure' button.
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Raquel Teixeira
commented
BRING BACK THE WARNING/PROMPT. It takes one extra click for anyone who complains about it INSTEAD of losing hours of work because you forget you are working in a csv file. I am an advanced excel user...that doesn't make me a master of memory to remember I'm still working in a csv file. Why not offer the option to have the prompt on or off?
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Anonymous
commented
Dear Microsoft,
Thank you for this change as that "lose information" warning has been bugging me for years whenever I choose to change the file format.
As for the complainers: BACKUPS -
Ryan
commented
WTF! A customer, a normal user (not an IT expert) has lost hours and hours of complex work because of this. I have various saved versions but not enough to reconstruct.
What a stupid fix - do you really think the majority of normal users who are experts in their job, but not excel experts, know about these changes?!
Their computer isn't even showing a warning!!! -
Kim
commented
This is one of the dumbest "fixes" I have ever seen. I can't believe behaviour that has existed for so long is taken away with little/no warning. Luckily I had backups of the files that were just destroyed by this "fix".
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Ben Layet
commented
Yup, lost work due to this change.... not a good idea...
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Romain
commented
This is incredible. I just learn about this "terrific new feature" as I have just lost more than one week worth of work because I thought I was in .xls, constantly saving my modification without getting the usual warning, what other formats could it be?
I literally want to cry over so much stupidity. Do people in Microsoft actually use Excel?
This was so obviously wrong that they should reimburse our subscription to cover for this mistake.You want to know what is a good feature Microsoft, just always save everything someone does, whatever the files format is. If it is on the screen, it should never be allowed to not be saved somewhere for recovery. Do you think people will do hours of work and not want it back? You should only allow to delete or lose data when the user is actively deleting them.
I think this is my last project using excel, I will do all my computation in R from now on. Scripts save everything you do and it is much easier to re-modify calculations afterward.
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Anonymous
commented
Please bring back the warning pop up!! I have lost hours of work by not realising the file I was working in was a .csv. Give people the choice to opt out of the warning rather than enforcing this change on us all!!
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Anonymous
commented
The logic of this change is reversed to what it should have been. The prompt on saving the file is much preferable to the warning banner (that you have to enable anyway). I wish Microsoft would think before making some changes
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Stephen
commented
Please fix this. Give me the option to not show warning again in the future. Even when you choose 'export to .csv' it thinks you might be making a mistake. Yes, I know what I am doing. I cannot think of a situation in which I would mistakenly do this. Plus it saves as a different file type so there is no concern
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Tamara
commented
Can you please bring the warning back or at least the option to opt-in? I've lost hours of work because this feature was removed. This is very frustrating.
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James
commented
Removing this warning was not a good idea. Even with the business bar notification up, there is nothing to stop you from doing 30min of formatting on an export, clicking save and believing that it actually saved.... Not good, not good at all.
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Ben
commented
yes it is a joke!!!
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Roland
commented
How ridiculous and stupid of Microsoft to remove the warning instead of adding a checkbox to the csv warning dialogue that allows an individual user to choose whether they want the warning or not. For most of us, dealing with numerous open workbooks its easy to forget the file types we are working with. I lost 4 hours worth of formula work because of no warning when I saved the csv workbook. Please, bring back the warning in a smart way and allow users to decide for themselves what is best practise instead if deciding for them. How MS'ish