Or at the very least turned off by default for CSV.
CSV is a data interchange format. When you open and hit "save" on one, unlike Excel's XLS/XLSX format, they cannot even store information about cell formats. So all this "feature" does is cause irreversible data loss to CSV.
There is absolutely no excuse, and never was an excuse, to ever auto-convert a CSV. I always felt like they kept doing this to under-cut CSV in order to force users to use an XLS/XLSX instead. But even with this sabotage Microsoft lost this war and yet continues to destroy data.
It is great I can turn this off, but until the people I'm sending the file to have also done so, it isn't enough. Still a high risk someone in the chain will cause data-loss.
Talking about under-cutting the value of CSV as interchange format... Instead of "comma-separated values", Excel treats CSV as "values separated by locale-specific characters". In continental European locales Excel CSV files are actually semicolon separated, and entirely incompatible with UK or American CSV files, or CSV files in non-Excel software.
I don’t even care that Excel by default wil transform “00001234” into “1234”. It seems like a sensible default. But…if only I could figure out how to turn that back to “00001234” for the few times I do not want it. And I don’t mean one instance, as double clicking the cell usually does it. I mean for 10,000 numbers at once.
