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I am exporting data from Salesforce using Data Loader, now I am facing some issues with the exported CSV file. Let me give an example,

In my custom object, I have some data stored as 23-02-07 which is the text format. When I export it and opens the CSV it converts to 2023-02-07. When I do the format cells and convert it to text it becomes 44964 which is totally wrong.

Please give your inputs, how can I handle this kind of data.

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I recommend using the free, open-source LibreOffice suite for CSV manipulation. If you open a CSV file in LibreOffice Calc, you'll get an options dialogue that provides two options to cover issues that Excel struggles with:

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First, you get to pick your text encoding (out of Salesforce, always UTF-8), to ensure that international characters are represented correctly. This is a common issue with CSVs in Excel.

But in the table labeled Fields, there's a solution to your issue. For each incoming column in your file, you'll see a few rows of sample data. You can select each column and choose a Column type to govern how the data is imported into LibreOffice. Set "Text" here to prevent the data being interpreted as a date and mangled in the fashion you describe.

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  • Hi David, Thanks for the quick response. My CSV contains 573606 rows, and it seems like Libra Office didn't support large data as when I open the file in Libra Office and tried using the filter to check data it got hanged. Again thanks for your input, and let me know if you have any other workaround. Commented Oct 3, 2018 at 14:30
  • Theoretically, LibreOffice should work with up to 1,048,576 rows (2^20). You probably cannot scroll through a lot of rows in the CSV import pane. I'd suggest completing the import first and then reviewing. That said, for a file that large, I would personally review in a programmer's editor rather than a spreadsheet. Commented Oct 3, 2018 at 14:35
  • another reason to not use Excel - when you have exported fields with large numerical values and Excel interprets them as scientific notation. The mere act of opening in Excel, changing no data (say, just move a column), then Save corrupts the exported data when affflicted by Excel "auto-formatting" Commented Oct 6, 2018 at 7:31
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LibreOffice didn't work for me, I have used the chrome extension called Salesforce inspector to extract the data. And after extracting I am just copying the data and paste it to excel.

Anyways, again thanks for the help, David.

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