Excel Unable to Display or Distinguish Text Strings

Question

I created a simple CSV file with only this exact text (quotes included):

"-2**31-1","-2**31"

How can I open this CSV file in Excel and get it to display exactly:

        A              B
1    -2**31-1       -2**31

The first value, especially, seems impossible to get to show up verbatim in A1, regardless of how I format the data.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Include an equal sign (=) before your quotes to force Excel to display each cell value as text.

Your file should look like this:

="-2**31-1",="-2**31"

and Excel will display it like this:

Source: this Stack Overflow answer