Why double-clicking breaks your numbers
In short: on double-click, Excel applies the default data formats of your computer. Swiss exports use semicolons, dates such as 31.01.2027 or 2027-01-31, and an apostrophe as thousands separator. If any of that clashes with your settings – common on laptops set to English (UK or US) – everything lands in one column or stays text.
Text looks like a number in the cell. Only the total gives it away, because it simply skips those rows. Quick test: select the amount column and check the status bar. If it shows «Count» but no «Sum», the amounts are text.
The safe way in four steps
This works in Excel 2016 and later and in Microsoft 365:
- Open a blank workbook, then «Data › From Text/CSV» and pick the file
- Set file origin to «65001: Unicode (UTF-8)» if umlauts look broken
- Choose the delimiter (usually semicolon) and check the preview
- In «Transform Data», set the date column to Date and the amount column to Decimal, using a Swiss locale
What Swiss banks deliver
| Bank | Delimiter | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| UBS, ZKB, PostFinance, cantonal banks (Finnova) | semicolon | debit and credit in two columns |
| Raiffeisen, Migros Bank, Neon | semicolon | one signed column |
| Yuh | semicolon | debit and credit, each with its own currency column |
| Revolut | comma | one signed column, fees separate |
Watch PostFinance: debits already arrive negative, so «credit minus debit» turns spending into income. Use credit minus ABS(debit). At Raiffeisen the headers are English even in the German e-banking, and «Booked At» may carry a time stamp.
Umlauts, apostrophes and minus signs
If «Gebührensäcke» shows up as «Gebührensäcke», the encoding is wrong: the file is UTF-8 and Excel reads it as Western European. Changing the file origin in the import dialog fixes it without touching the file.
Amounts get stuck as text because of three things: the apostrophe as thousands separator, a leading «CHF», and typographic minus signs that look like hyphens. =NUMBERVALUE(SUBSTITUTE(A2,"CHF",""),".","'") converts them regardless of your language settings.
Privacy: keep converters out of it
A bank statement reveals your salary, doctors, pharmacy, donations and address. Do not upload it to a free online converter or a chatbot just to split columns – it is rarely clear where the data is processed or how long it is kept. Excel does the conversion locally on your device.
Shortcut: bank templates or the app
The household budget for Excel ships column plans for 9 Swiss banks and bank groups – UBS, PostFinance, Raiffeisen, ZKB, cantonal banks, Migros Bank, Neon, Yuh and Revolut. Paste the export as columns or whole lines; dates and amounts are read independently of your Excel language, over 400 Swiss merchant rules assign categories and duplicates are flagged. It comes in English, German, French and Italian for CHF 49 once, no subscription, no macros.
Prefer no spreadsheet at all? The BudgetHub app imports the same files with presets for the major Swiss banks – without connecting your bank account.