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Change to Flywheel Generated CSV and TSV files

Change Details

Starting with Flywheel version 20.1.0, CSV and TSV files generated by Flywheel Core services will provide greater data integrity and security via content escaping, to prevent Microsoft Excel from interpreting the content as formulas.

What about the content is changing?

  • Values that start with a =, -, +, or @ will have a \ prefixed to it.
  • Escaping only applies to string (text) values. (eg. negative numbers are not effected)

What Features are impacted?

  • Exporting Data Views (CSV & TSV)
  • Exporting Search results (CSV)
  • Exporting Access Log records (CSV)
  • Exporting Audit Trail Reports (CSV)

What files are not changing?

  • Data import logs
  • Gear outputs
  • Audit Trail Reports generated before the installation of 20.1.0

Adjust your processing of Flywheel generated CSV and TSV files wherever you expect those files to contain string values with leading =, -, +, or @ characters, and where your processing results would be unacceptable when those values are escaped with a \ prefix.