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This is probably an easy fix, but I can't seem to figure it out...

outputting a list to CSV in Python using the following code:

w = csv.writer(file('filename.csv','wb')) w.writerows(mylist)

One of the list items is a ratio, so it contains values like '23/54', '9/12', etc. Excel is recognizing some of these values (like 9/12) as a date. What's the easiest way to solve this?

Thanks

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  • The problem is in the format - Excel automatically applies recognition rules to .csv files and there's no way to turn it off. See also stackoverflow.com/questions/137359/excel-csv-number-cell-format Commented Oct 18, 2012 at 22:07
  • Hmm, maybe as a workaround I could split the ratio column into 2 columns...ie '9/12' becomes 2 integer columns of 9, 12. Commented Oct 19, 2012 at 1:40

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Because csv is a text-only format, you cannot tell Excel anything about how to interpret the data, I am afraid.

You'd have to generate actual Excel files (using xlwt for example, documentation and tutorials available on http://www.python-excel.org/).

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Agreed. I suspect if its the data presentation function in Excel who "interpreted" and "displayed" those as dates. The original file should contain the well-formatted data as expected
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You could do this:

# somelist contains data like '12/51','9/43' etc mylist = ["'" + val + "'" for val in somelist] w = csv.writer(open('filename.csv','wb')) for me in mylist: w.writerow([me])

This would ensure your data is written as it is to csv.

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Actually you don't need to do this explicitly, csv.writer has a quoting flag that can be set: docs.python.org/2/library/csv.html#csv.QUOTE_ALL

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