CSV files on Office 365

Question

I have MS Office 365 apps installed on my Apple Mac - Word, Powerpoint, Excel etc.

One problem I seem to face is that every time I open a CSV file, excel seems to open it as a normal spreadsheet rather than what I expect to see.

Example of a CSV File I expect to see:

Example of a normal spreadsheet that my excel seems to open:

Is there a way to default Excel to open csv files as csv?

Solution

From my understanding, this is related to Excel having the default separator set for csv. I don't use MAC, so can't test this, but the information here seems relevant to you:

https://superuser.com/questions/606272/how-to-get-excel-to-interpret-the-comma-as-a-default-delimiter-in-csv-files

Specifically in the accepted answer, it says

On Mac OS X, this setting seems to be deduced from the decimal separator setting (in the Language & Region pane of System Preferences, go to Advanced). If the Decimal Separator is a point then the default CSV separator will be a comma, but if the Decimal Separator is a comma, then the default CSV separator will be a semicolon.

If you can take away Excel's knowledge of the default csv separator (which they suggest is derived from the MAC setting described above), then it will no longer be able to automatically convert it to columns against your wishes.