How to deal with lines starting with '=' in Excel?

Question

I want to obtain a simple CSV file that looks like this:

Filename,Value1,Value2
filename1.ext,0.38,0.44
filename2.ext,0.60,0.50
...

However, -unfortunately- some of my filenames start with = and that messes up the content in Excel, so those lines (well, cells) are replaced with #NAME?. So how can I prevent Excel to modify any of the content while saving as .csv?

P.S.: I'm actually obtaining the *.csv files programmatically, but then I need to replace some columns across files, so I -kind of- need to use Excel.

Edit

I tried the solutions here, but in that case Excel actually removes the = sign in the beginning, hence modifying the content.. It seems like I'm going to quit doing this but I still wonder if there is a solution for this. Thanks,

Answer 1

You can format the cells as text so it wont interpret the = sign.

You can use ' to escape the = sign.

Or, as you already obtain your *.csv programmatically, you could script it with a scripting language of your choice. CSV are just plain text files that are associated with MS Excel by default.

Answer 2

The best and most general solution is to encapsulate all texts in the CSV with " (double quotes). That works in Excel, and most other tools with understand that too.