If your Excel files are opening in Notepad, you should be able to open it by changing the default file types settings, among other fixes.

To open a CSV file in Notepad, you need to open Notepad > click on File > Open. Then, select All Files and choose the CSV file. Read: How to Convert CSV to Excel (XLS or XLSX) using Command line.

If your Excel files are opening in Notepad on Windows PC, here's how you can reset the settings to make .xls, .xlsx, etc files open in Excel.

File Setup To build a CSV file to open in Microsoft Excel, you'll need to decide how many columns you'll use in Microsoft Excel for the categories of information you're preparing in Notepad.

Learn how to open CSV files on Windows 11 using Excel, Notepad, Google Sheets, and more – step-by-step methods for any setup.