It is sometimes possible to write code to alter your CSVs to retain the strings.
The first thing would be to write them as: entry1,"0123456789",entry2 rather than entry1,0123456789,entry2. This has worked for me in some instances in Excel whereby I have to escape certain things inside a string, but I would not be surprised if Excel still messes this up. For example, giving the triangle exclamation mark box and then helpfully suggest to convert to number.
If you want to go further, you can do something like write a routine that alters the CSV, such as entry1,hospitalString(0123456789),entry2. Sure, there are problems with this too, but Excel can break a lot of things and the above examples I do use in practise (the first example I put the double quotes to escape single quotes in foreign language unicode).
Another thing Excel can do is break your dates, by switching months (usually only for dates < 13th of the month, but often a partial conversion in your data for < 13th and >= 13th) or convert dates to integers.
The first thing would be to write them as: entry1,"0123456789",entry2 rather than entry1,0123456789,entry2. This has worked for me in some instances in Excel whereby I have to escape certain things inside a string, but I would not be surprised if Excel still messes this up. For example, giving the triangle exclamation mark box and then helpfully suggest to convert to number.
If you want to go further, you can do something like write a routine that alters the CSV, such as entry1,hospitalString(0123456789),entry2. Sure, there are problems with this too, but Excel can break a lot of things and the above examples I do use in practise (the first example I put the double quotes to escape single quotes in foreign language unicode).
Another thing Excel can do is break your dates, by switching months (usually only for dates < 13th of the month, but often a partial conversion in your data for < 13th and >= 13th) or convert dates to integers.