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Number not saving CSV file correctly

I'm saving a CSV file on Numbers and it's not separating the columns, instead it's bringing all the data into one column. When I open the file on a text editor normally columns in a CSV are separated by commas (,) and in the CSV I export from Numbers the columns are separated by semi-colons (;). Does anyone know why this is happening?

MacBook Pro 15″, OS X 10.10

Posted on Apr 10, 2023 12:19 PM

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Posted on Apr 10, 2023 1:10 PM

Your computer (System Preferences) is set to a region that uses the comma as the decimal separator. In those places, CSV files often use semicolons. Otherwise, numeric data would need quotes around it so the decimal separator would not be mistaken as a column separator.

3 replies

Apr 10, 2023 3:03 PM in response to Mereynag

You can go into System Preferences/Language & Region/Advanced and set the decimal separators to a dot. It will then export with commas as the column separator. It will also change all your numbers in your spreadsheet (and elsewhere) so they use the dot as the decimal separator. Set them back when you are done.


Or you can use find/replace twice in the CSV file with it opened in a text editor, but it may be less than perfect.

  1. Find/Replace all commas with dots. This will fix the numbers but will also replace commas that are within text.
  2. Find/replace all semicolons with commas. This will fix the column separators but will also replace any semicolons that are within text.


I may be forgetting other ways to go about this. This question comes up from time to time.


Number not saving CSV file correctly

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