Home Analysis Examples Unexpected Results User and Session IDs aren’t showing up correctly when I import CSVs into Excel, how do I fix this?

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User and Session IDs aren’t showing up correctly when I import CSVs into Excel, how do I fix this?

When importing CSVs into Excel, excel automatically converts BIGINTS into scientific notation. This results in your user and session IDs showing up incorrectly in these reports in Heap. To prevent this from happening, complete the following steps:

  1. Download the CSV from Heap
  2. Open up the CSV in Excel
  3. Highlight cell A1
  4. Navigate to File > Import in Excel’s left-hand navigation
  5. Go through the import wizard; when doing so, set the ID column to text
  6. Complete the import

To avoid this problem altogether, we recommend importing your CSV into a sheet via an open-source program like OpenOffice or LibreOffice. This allows you to format the CSVs as you’re opening them.