Scenario:
Right now have an excel spreadsheat which is a product list with
several fields. We need to export this file to a CSV-Format for
uploading it into an internet database. No problem so far. But when we
download and import this CSV-file again in excel, cases are changed
and fileds like article number "000456" become stripped to "456"
because excel thinks that the fields are numbers and not text. This
makes the file useless for us.

What we need is a simple software tool for windows (preferably
freeware or low cost shareware) to REPLACE EXCEL (important!) which is
able to open, edit and save text files with character separates values
(CSV-files) without changing or formatting fields like Microsoft Ecxel
does.

The new software must open the csv-text file directly where the single
fields are separated by a special char (normally semicolon). The tool
must have an option to set the special char to "µ" or some kind of
never used sign so that the single fields are seperated from each
other and displayed for editing within the software. After we change
like the price from 3.99 to 3.49 the file must be saved in CSV-format
directly.

The tool should replace excel for editing the CSV-database completely.
Please dont give me hints or plugins for excel or other solutions
based on microsoft products - we need a simple standalone freeware /
shareware and that csv-text file, that's it. We have several
ciustomers and therefore the price for that software must be low (0-25
at most, 0 ist best ;)

I hope I have explained it somehow understandable.

any simple text editor can do that trick (if really in a clinch use
notepad) but my favourite has always been Qedit

>any simple text editor can do that trick (if really in a clinch use
>notepad) but my favourite has always been Qedit

Sorry, but I specified exactly what we need.

You will not tell me that you have fun editing a pure 8 MB csv-file
with a text editor - the software we need must be able to display each
col separately like excel for editing but work in the native
csv-format without specific formatting.