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First, note that if you apply formatting (font, alignment, etc) and save it back to CSV, your formatting won't be saved. You can see that CSV is just some text separated by commas (hence the format name - Comma-Separated Values). There is no place to put formatting.

So, the only difference is the cells. Excel splits the file into cells automatically by searching for commas and line ends. It does this because it's a table processor and it's designed to work with tables. VSCode doesn't have this functionality, it displays just the plain text.

In other words, Excel converts CSV to its native format in memory, allowing full functionality.

You can save the table with formatting to another file format, for example XLSX, which is much more complex than CSV and has place to save formatting. Internally it's a ZIP file which contains XML documents (and may contain other files, for example, if you insert image into your table, it will be stored in the ZIP file in its native format). If you are interested, you can unzip it and study its contents.

First, note that if you apply formatting (font, alignment, etc) and save it back to CSV, your formatting won't be saved. You can see that CSV is just some text separated by commas (hence the format name - Comma-Separated Values). There is no place to put formatting.

So, the only difference is the cells. Excel splits the file into cells automatically by searching for commas and line ends. It also "interprets" the data, making determinations about number formats, dates, text, etc. (for example, by default, numbers and dates are aligned to the right and text to the left). It does this because it's a table processor and it's designed to work with tables. VSCode doesn't have this functionality, it displays just the plain text.

In other words, Excel converts CSV to its native format in memory, allowing full functionality.

You can save the table with formatting to another file format, for example XLSX, which is much more complex than CSV and has place to save formatting. Internally it's a ZIP file which contains XML documents (and may contain other files, for example, if you insert image into your table, it will be stored in the ZIP file in its native format). If you are interested, you can unzip it and study its contents.

First, note that if you apply formatting (font, alignment, etc) and save it back to CSV, your formatting won't be saved. You can see that CSV is just some text separated by commas (hence the format name - Comma-Separated Values). There is no place to put formatting.

So, the only difference is the cells. Excel splits the file into cells automatically by searching for commas and line ends. It does this because it's a table processor and it's designed to work with tables. VSCode doesn't have this functionality, it displays just the plain text.

You can save the table with formatting to another file format, for example XLSX, which is much more complex than CSV and has place to save formatting. Internally it's a ZIP file which contains XML documents (and may contain other files, for example, if you insert image into your table, it will be stored in the ZIP file in its native format). If you are interested, you can unzip it and study its contents.

First, note that if you apply formatting (font, alignment, etc) and save it back to CSV, your formatting won't be saved. You can see that CSV is just some text separated by commas (hence the format name - Comma-Separated Values). There is no place to put formatting.

So, the only difference is the cells. Excel splits the file into cells automatically by searching for commas and line ends. It does this because it's a table processor and it's designed to work with tables. VSCode doesn't have this functionality, it displays just the plain text.

In other words, Excel converts CSV to its native format in memory, allowing full functionality.

You can save the table with formatting to another file format, for example XLSX, which is much more complex than CSV and has place to save formatting. Internally it's a ZIP file which contains XML documents (and may contain other files, for example, if you insert image into your table, it will be stored in the ZIP file in its native format). If you are interested, you can unzip it and study its contents.

First, note that if you apply formatting (font, alignment, etc) and save it back to CSV, your formatting won't be saved. You can see that CSV is just some text separated by commas (hence the format name - Comma-Separated Values). There is no place to put formatting.

So, the only difference is the cells. Excel splits the file into cells automatically by searching for commas and line ends. It does this because it's a table processor and it's designed to work with tables. VSCode doesn't have this functionality, it displays just the plain text.

You can save the table with formatting to another file format, for example XLSX, which is much more complex than CSV and has place to save formatting. Internally it's a ZIP file which contains XML documents and some other files. If you are interested, you can unzip it and study its contents.

First, note that if you apply formatting (font, alignment, etc) and save it back to CSV, your formatting won't be saved. You can see that CSV is just some text separated by commas (hence the format name - Comma-Separated Values). There is no place to put formatting.

So, the only difference is the cells. Excel splits the file into cells automatically by searching for commas and line ends. It does this because it's a table processor and it's designed to work with tables. VSCode doesn't have this functionality, it displays just the plain text.

You can save the table with formatting to another file format, for example XLSX, which is much more complex than CSV and has place to save formatting. Internally it's a ZIP file which contains XML documents (and may contain other files, for example, if you insert image into your table, it will be stored in the ZIP file in its native format). If you are interested, you can unzip it and study its contents.