Plus and minus characters cannot be displayed in a CSV file

When generating reports, note that the plus (+) and minus ( - ) characters are not properly displayed in reports that are generated in CSV format. This applies to reports generated by both site and sponsor users. While this issue does not cause any data loss for your study, it does prevent you from properly viewing your study's collected data.

This issue is caused by the way certain characters are processed in Microsoft Excel. Whenever a data string starts with the plus character (+) or the minus character (-), Microsoft Excel attempts to apply a calculation formula in that specific cell.

If a site user enters any of these two characters in a field, when you attempt to generate a report in a CSV format and open that file in Microsoft Excel, the data for that field will not be correctly processed by Microsoft Excel.