Enclosing every field with double quotes in CSV file using c#

Question

I have found several threads on people wishing to REMOVE quotes from their CSV file, but not adding them. And the ones I have found about adding quotes have not helped my case.

I'm using Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel and am creating a CSV file that will be read by a program that oddly enough requires each field to be in double quotes. However when I write to a cell using, for example:

xlSheet.Cells[1,1] = "\"" + id + "\"";

my output is """id"""

Is there any fix for this? My client also wishes to be able to open the file in Excel, hence my use of Microsoft.Office.Interop

Answer 1

You dont really have to write to the file using Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel instead just write to a file using a StreamWriter with the name of the file as Your_File.csv. And still u can open this CSV file using Excel. Remember to use proper delimiters in the CSV file. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Excel may be interpreting your "id" value as a literal string rather than a number, then adding additional quotes to it when it converts it to CSV.

Rather than adding quotes, store the value as a string instead of a number:

xlSheet.Cells[1,1] = id.ToString();