I've become aware of the limitations of opening .csv data files into Excel 2007 (earlier versions have the same issue). Various changes are made to the data as the file is opened, including at least the following:
* Fields that appear to be numeric and have leading or trailing zeroes have the leading/trailing zeroes removed
* Values that Excel thinks match a date such as 5-10 get assigned a data type of date. Reformatting the field's data type to text gives a crazy value such as 40308 (probably the number of days from 1/1/1970 to the date 5/10 in the current year)
Saving changes to the original .csv file causes permanent data loss as the above changes are saved back to the file (What were they thinking?!).
This issue can be worked around by using the Data -> Get External Data From Text tool, but I deal with .csv files so frequently that I want an easier way of getting my data opened without corruption. I came up with the below set of actions:
When right clicking on a .csv file in Windows Explorer, a context menu appears with various options. It would be useful to have an option “Open without corruption using Excel” or similar, which does the following:
1.	Opens Excel
2.	Creates a blank spreadsheet
3.	Imports the select .csv file similar to the following commands:
a.	Select Data -> From Text
b.	Select the .csv file to be imported
c.	Choose the “Delimited” option
d.	Use comma as the delimiter character
e.	Select all columns (hold shift and click the right-most column header)
f.	Change the “Column data format” to Text
g.	Click Finish
h.	Put the data into cell A1
4.	And possibly even alter the currently open Excel file name from “Book1” (or whatever it is) to the name of the .csv file that was opened.
I have a colleague trying to learn to program with .NET that can attempt this, but the key questions are:
1. Will it be possible to perform the above actions with .NET?
2. What is a general programming plan (perhaps which modules to use, etc?) that I can pass on to my colleague for development?