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]
105 comments
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Poorly Considered Change
commented
I lost work over this.
I export my data as CSV, start making changes, go to save and expect a prompt advising me that by saving in CSV my changes will be lost. I then 'save as' to save in an appropriate format.Now that I know about the change, I was able to revert the behaviour in Excel settings.
YES - I find the warning annoying at times and a 'do not ask again for this workbook' feature would have been appreciated but not a complete removal of the warning.
Whoever thought this silent change was a good idea and should immediately remove themselves from the IT industry and go work stacking shelves in a supermarket (or similar) where they cannot do further harm.
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Anonymous
commented
Why do I still see all the warnings about saving as CSV, even though the "Show data loss warning" is NOT selected in the Options. I have deselected that option, but the warnings still keep appearing!!
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Anonymous
commented
I've lost so many hours waiting for Excel to double-check if I want to save as CSV then re-checking every time I resave the file, or whenever I try to close it. Please make this an optional feature!!!!
It's really frustrating that I still get this check every time I resave a CSV file, even if when I opened it it was already a CSV file -
Anonymous
commented
But what about if I opened an .xlsx file, then saved it as .csv, then made more edits, then tried to resave it? When I do that it always bloody warns me every time I resave the now-CSV file. Really really really annoying, and takes ages to save as CSV each time.
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Tania Walton
commented
@Joe Blow - there are many programs that will only import CSV files and sometimes you want to bring in extra information (e.g. a vlookup that updates a certain column but leaves the base information alone). This can be done in a CSV file, copy and save as values only and you don't need an extra XLSX file floating around just because you used formulae in a CSV file. The frustration we have (those of us who use it this way) is that even when you have already saved your file, you get the warning message each and every time you click on save... giving us the "don't tell me again" option would seem to suit both parties.
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Joe Blow
commented
I don't understand why Excel even lets you do any formatting, adding sheets, formulas, anything at all when opened and running a CSV file. Why is it even an option?? Where is there a universe where someone would even WANT to do formulas and special formatting but DO NOT WANT to save any of it? When would that ever happen? So....why in the world would Excel even let you DO any of that in a CSV file? Completely and utterly stupid. It should error with a dialog that you can't do those things in a CSV file, right off the bat. Just disable all of it. Super easy. Common sense. None of us would lose our stuff, and the CSV file people would not get their annoying banner. Everybody wins. How hard is that? Really....
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Earl
commented
Do you know how many times I've lost my data to this this past month?? Excel finally updated from 2013 and I'm dying here. I have always ignored those bars because they never have signified data loss! I WANT THE POPUP. Bring back the popup 2020!
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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.