Export feeds are either in XML or CSV format. If it is in CSV, Excel is most often recommended to open this kind of file.

Here are the steps to open it properly:

STEP 1: Open the feed link in your browser. Then save it on your computer (right click: “Save as” or Ctrl + S) and put “.csv” at the end of the file name.

STEP 2: Open the file with Excel. It often happens the text is all in a single column (instead of being separated into individual columns). To have the text being well displayed, select the first column and go in Data<Text to Columns:

STEP 3: In the Convert Text to Columns Wizard, choose the option “Delimited” then click on “next”.

Choose the separator used in the file. In this example the separator is “Tab” but it can be “;” or “,” or “|” etc.

STEP 4: Click on finish, the text should be now displayed correctly (i.e separated into different columns)

The file might be too big to download it directly with the browser. It is then better to use downloading software like: http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/.

Once the file is downloaded, open it with excel (if it is a CSV format) following the steps above.

Sometimes, product references, EAN or anything with numbers are displayed in Excel differently from what is in the feed (scientific notation for instance). To have the right values displayed, the Data Format must be set to “Text” in the Convert Text to Columns Wizard for the required column.

If this message appears after the Text to Column conversion:

It means the file might be badly interpreted by Excel. This is due to the separator set by default in Windows settings.

For instance, if the semicolon “;” is used as separator by default, Excel won’t be able to make the difference between the “;” used in the text and the “;” used as separator in the .csv file. That’s why it is advised to set “|” as separator by default since this character is rarely used in texts. (Control panel\Clock, Language, and Region\Change date, time, or number formats\Additional settings).

For more information, here is a detailed tutorial about separator by default: http://www.solveyourtech.com/change-the-windows-7-list-separator/