Did you download exciting data from CrowdTangle, but you open it to find that line breaks from stories have made a mess of your spreadsheet? You're not alone, but fortunately, there's an easy answer!
TL;DR: If you have access (if not, ask someone on your team), go to Gear->Dashboard Settings:
Inside, you will see this:
Change that to a ; and hit Save, then try your download again and you should be in good shape!
The full story (for the brave):
This is a tale of international differences, data importing defaults, and strange choices made by product managers. We'll try to make this quick.
- Due to localization differences, and despite the name, CSV (comma-separated value) reports are separated by commas in some parts of the world and by semicolons in others.
- By default, CrowdTangle CSVs come with commas as separators, not semicolons.
- When you double-click a CSV, Excel makes assumptions about how to open it based on your country. In the US, it expects commas, and opens our CrowdTangle CSVs perfectly. If you're in a semicolon country, Excel doesn't handle the comma version well, and the line breaks destroy the spreadsheet.
- For unknown reasons, the set of filters that Excel applies when you double-click are NOT replicable via File->Open or File->Import. Even if you separate by commas, line breaks ruin everything, even in a comma country like the US.
What this means is that if you're in a semicolon country, a comma-separated file is basically unusable. So follow the above instructions to set your separator, redo your download, and be on your way!