CSV

CSV (comma-separated values) is a plain text file in which each line is a record and fields are separated by a character — a comma in the international standard, a semicolon in Brazil. It is not a spreadsheet: it is the simplest, most universal format for moving a table from one system to another.

What it looks like inside

Open a CSV in Notepad and you see exactly this:

name;phone;tag
Ana Souza;5531999998888;hot lead
Bruno Lima;5511988887777;quote sent

The first line is the header, and it is what the system uses to map the columns. A wrong, missing, or non-standard header is the number one cause of an import that "does not recognize the fields."

Why Brazilian Excel uses semicolons

Because in Brazil the comma is already the decimal separator. If Excel also used a comma between columns, 1,50 would turn into two cells. The practical result: a CSV exported in the United States opens scrambled here, and vice versa — the file is correct, it is just a different separator.

The four mistakes that break a contact import

1. An accented letter turning into José. The file was saved in one character encoding and read in another. Save it as CSV UTF-8.
2. A phone number turning into 5.53199E+12. The column was formatted as a number. Format it as text before typing or pasting.
3. A leading zero disappearing. Same cause as the item above, and it vanishes with no warning.
4. A missing country code. 31999998888 is not a valid number for WhatsApp; 5531999998888 is.

What CSV does not store

Formulas, formatting, color, tabs, images, data types and relationships between tables. Everything becomes text. That is why it is good for migrating a database, not for being the system — a shared spreadsheet used as a customer database breaks the day two people edit it at once and nobody knows which version is right.