The entire office suite is horrible when it comes to preserving user data though. Access will change sql queries if you look at the code and close the query without saving or modifying anything. It's especially annoying when the query no longer works because Access 'helpfully' removed some parenthesis.
But, weirdly excels CSV issues are a more mac-specific program. MSFT insists that mac has a different format for csvs and will constantly destroy csvs, change formatting, unquote fields, merge columns together, insert random unicode characters, screwed up line endings, etc if you save on mac and aren't careful.
I've actually noticed msft has changed the default csv output format in excel mac twice over the past month (including making the csv default format be TSV??) which is pretty ridiculous.
I just want them to comma seperate, quote fields if necessary, and properly escape characters. Don't insert random characters or fuck with encodings. How hard could it be?
Mac had a different format for CSVs, and actually Excel started its life as a Mac product.