In Excel 2007, when I save a .xlsx file as a .csv file, it give me the standard warning about some features not compatible with .csv format and I hit ok and save the document. My question is this:

When I save as a .csv and then close out of excel completely, I get the same message and then it asks to override the .csv with another .csv of the same name. I never thought anything of it. BUT, if I save and then close only that document (not all of excel) then it does NOT ask the same question again.

There is a difference in file size when save these two different ways. WHAT IS HAPPENING THAT CAUSES FILE SIZE LOSS?

I can't understand why there is a difference in these two ways of doing the exact same thing.

Please, any insight would put my mind to ease.

Thank you.

long ago, the second "save changes?" on a csv would take columns with padded zeros and strip them down to number fields.. learned that one the hard way.. don't know if that's still true..

Just rename the .csv file to .txt and open it in Notepad to see what's happening. CSV files are quite easy to read, they're simply (drumroll) a list of comma separated values in ASCII...

Edit: BTW, you might have to make file extensions visible to rename the file to .txt. I have no idea what OS you're using, and I don't even know how to do it in Vista, so you're on your own there. If in doubt, get a good text editor that doesn't care what the extension is.