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]
85 comments
-
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!!
-
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
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
Ben
commented
yes it is a joke!!!
-
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
-
Anonymous
commented
OOH, I just had an idea! Why don't you also take away the warning that you're closing the workbook without saving! It's just so annoying that every time I want to close a worksheet or workbook, it asks me if I want to save it, even if all I did was accidentally put a space in a blank cell. If you take away the warning altogether - maybe put an 'unobtrusive' bar at the top, then no one would get that annoying 'do you want to save' message!
Yeah. This is what you did to us already. Why not drive the final nail in our collective coffins.
SMH -
Anonymous
commented
I, and other coworkers, have lost hours and hours of work because of this stupid feature. Why not just have a checkbox for the popup saying "check this box if you don't want to see this warning again'? Because that would have been way smarter than taking away something that was merely a nuisance to people. It's just inconsiderate to do something that causes people more work. Especially if they didn't know about the change because their company auto-updates Office.
-
Anonymous
commented
I hate this. I constantly have to redo work and have lost all detail when pivot tables were added on another tab. It saves without any warning at all. You have to remember that you opened it as .csv an hour or more ago.
-
asdf
commented
Absolutely stupid idea to remove the warning.
-
Roy
commented
Your "non-intrusive business bar" disappears forever with one click, causing who knows how many people to lose hours of work. Saving a CSV gives no warning (not even a non-modal dialogue like the first business bar) that the only place your CSV-incompatible work will ever exist is your RAM and closing Excel will, unceremoniously, permanently delete it.
Good job, MS.
-
Chris
commented
just happened to me 6 hours gone. why are there no warnings for this? why does it let you save your work only to not save anything?
-
Anonymous
commented
It seems I've missed something, because I still get this horrible and stupid pop-up.
-
TM
commented
Not having a warning is crazy. I've just lost a weeks worth of work as I was working in CSV format, happily creating new sheets without realising it would not be saved. When I re-open my file, voila all my work has gone. Excellent idea, not having a warning.
-
Devon
commented
This checkbox is disabled for me in file>options>save but I still get the message every time I save. If i check it, and go back into options, it stays unchecked.
-
Nick
commented
What a rubbish update!
-
David Aldred
commented
@Frustrated
You can disable / re-enable the warning by going to File-->Options-->Save-->'Show data loss warning when editing comma delimited files -
So where in the program do I turn off the warning? There is nothing here that tells a user how to do it!!!!! If the solution is creating a macro, that is BS. There should be a simple checkbox in the save options to turn this off or on. WHERE IS IT?
-
Dan
commented
Where is the business analyst? There needs to be a happy medium. Regular users need to be warned they are working in .csv so they don't loose data (arguably, they should not be working in csv in the first place), and developers/techs need the .csv save feature to be less obtrusive (you are prompted no less than 4 times, twice on initial save, and twice when trying to leave the document, even if there were no changes!). The balance is to notify the user upon initial save and then alter the UI when working in .csv. You currently can keep working in multiple tabs, even though you are in csv. This is dangerous for normal users and developers alike. A good balance would be to alter the appearance of non-active tabs or remove them completely upon save (or maybe provide a toggle to "work on at your own risk," after having prompted the user that .csv mode is being implemented. The irony of all this? This problem has persisted for years and MS still had not implemented a common sense solution. Again, where is the BA?
