California Office of Statewide Health Planning & Development

Help Tools - CSV Files

CSV's and Excel

To use .csv Files:

1. Open Excel
2. Select File, Open
3. In the "Open" dialog box, change the "look in" drop down menu to the location where you downloaded the file; change the "Files of type" (bottom left corner) to "all files"; select the file "name" and double click or click on the "Open" button.
4. Excel will then format cell-by-cell each variable based on the contents (numeric or text) of the cell.

Note: CSV files DO NOT initiate the Excel Text Import Wizard.

Comma Separated Value files

These are sometimes referred to as "Comma delimited files" that contain the values in a table as a series of ASCII text lines organized so each column value is separated by a comma from the next column's value and each row starts a new line. Here's an example:

Doe,John,555-7814
Johnson,Mary,555-1234
Smith,Abigail,555-4789

A CSV file allows for the collection of data from any table so that it can be conveyed as input to another table-oriented application such as Microsoft Excel, Lotus 1-2-3, or Quattro Pro.