Save as .csv converts dashes "-" to "?"

Encountered an interesting problem today. When I save as an excel to a CSV and open it up, I see that what was in excel as ex. "sm-15-16" comes out as a csv as "sm?15?16"

The interesting bit is that we have an excel template and at some point there was a fork - someone edited it saved it as a different template. The altered template does this, but the original one does not have this behavior.

Any idea as to what could have caused the change?

To my knowledge it only seems that some superficial things changed in the modified excel template.

If i take the '‐' and do a find and replace all with '-" it fixes it.

Originally Posted by kev_

Not all "dashes" were born equal...
See attached
- look at the formula in column B
- different "dashes" have different codes
- a possble clue..

Well I am aware that there are hypens en dash and em dash- but I'm wandering what made the switch. In both 'forks' of the excel template, those numbers and dashes come from the same source. Which is perplexing

Originally Posted by kev_

You said you used Find&Replace on the "dashes" to make the problem go away
- which is why I am following this trail until you prove me wrong...

It may not be the reason. But we can easily eliminate that possibility.

To verify the character value of the "good" and "bad" dashes
- choose the same cell in both template files - where different result is returned in the CSV file
- the formula below only looks at the FIRST character in the cell - so delete all characters before the dash

Formula:

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If this formula gives the same number in both files then the cause is elsewhere
- but why did Find&Replace sort the problem?

I'll give it a shot

Detective hat is on.