title: Difference between Excel .csv and plain .csv?
body: <p>I am running Windows 7 and have MS Office installed. Any time I download a .csv file the &quot;file type&quot; line in the &quot;save as...&quot; dialog defaults to &quot;Microsoft Office Excel comma separated values file&quot;. <strong>Is there actually a Microsoft specific format that is distinct from &quot;plain&quot; .csv?</strong></p>
  <p>Googling the relevant terms returns various incredibly uninformative pages such as <a href="http://extension.informer.com/csv/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this one</a>. Is any information lost or gained, or anything encoded differently by using this format than by just treating a file as a .csv, conforming to the <a href="https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4180#section-2" rel="nofollow noreferrer">general standards</a>?</p>