By Michael Nocito, data analyst · Published August 8, 2026
By the end of this page you will export a query result and open it with the leading zeros, the accented characters and the dates all still correct. Here is the thing worth knowing before anything else: your export is almost certainly fine. The damage happens when you open it, and the difference between a wrecked file and a clean one is which of two ways you opened the same file.
Here is what to actually do today. Stop double-clicking exported CSVs. Open Excel first, then use Data, Get Data, From Text/CSV , and open the file from there. That one change prevents most of what follows.
The short version: export as CSV, open it through the import route rather than by double-click, and add a byte order mark if accented characters matter.
The same file having two different fates is the one idea worth the page, so it gets the picture.
