this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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I recently had a hard time explaining to a coworker that the "Increase number of decimals" button in Excel doesn't work if you already exported to a CSV with only a decimal of precision. It worked on their end because they had the excel file, but I had the CSV. I managed to come up with a clever and innovative solution to the problem though; I gave up and worked on something else.
There ya go.
Yeah sucks when he’s the only guy giving you tasks and what else are you going to do?
Excel is pretty awful software.Â
10-15 years ago it was good, but it just isn’t anymore.Â
Considering it is being saved in another format, I'd hardly consider this an excel problem.
CSV has existed since before personal computers, much less Microsoft office.
Maybe, by why wouldn't Excel let uou increase the number of digits in a CSV? The data is currently in Excel, and more digits isn't incompatible with the CSV format.
Because it's basically a text file. The data doesn't exist anymore once you open it as a CSV on another computer. It'd basically just add zeros to the end.
They could probably get that info from the other file, but that would mean getting that person to give it to you again.
Yeah thanks, I didn't understand the original problem but I've got it now 🙂
You can't increase the decimal precision beyond the limits of the available data which I think is what OP's coworker wasn't understanding -- unless I'm the one who misunderstood.
The coworker rounded the numerical data during the conversion from xlsx to csv meaning there was less data in the exported csv than in the original Excel file. They seemed to think the data did still exist in the csv but it was being hidden and that they could simply change the precision to unhide it.
Ahhh, the excel format keeps the precision but changes the display to 1 decimal. When exported to CSV, only that 1 decimal is exported, so you can't bring back what isn't there. But the original file still has it.
I understand now, thanks! Definitely a coworker problem not an Excel problem then.
Nope. Still an excel problem. Why should changing a display option alter the underlying data on export?
Well, that's a good point. However, if I wanted to export a CSV with only one decimal place, it would be mighty annoying if changing it to one in Excel didn't save it like that in the CSV. Unless there was another option to control that.
That’s actually pretty terrible. Can you load the csv and then save it again as an xls? Once it’s loaded, why does it care what the source format was?
the original doc has the math, the csv only has the pre-calculated numbers
you cant recover lost data by just resaving in another format lol
As soon as you convert from an .XLS file to a .CSV file, the data and sig figs used to display that data are saved while the math formulas used to calculate that data are erased.
This means that when you try to go from .CSV to .XLS, Excel doesn't know the original formula that created the data to then be able to display more decimal points. The formula is absolutely necessary to change sig figs of displayed data.
The only other way I can think of that would allow one to change sig figs in .CSV data is if the .XLS file was converted with like the maximum number of sig figs displayed, or let's say 10-20. Then in a .CSV, you can modify the sig figs to something less, like 0-20.
But I want to say that if you save that .CSV file after the sig fig change, where you original converted it with 10-20 sig figs but then changed them to 0-20, the .CSV overwrites the data and you lose the sig figs that you concatenated.
Result: adding decimal points in a .CSV isn't possible.
I think you misunderstood the problem.
Is the problem that someone else is wrong and we want to relish in the agony of dealing with it?