CSV file downloaded from QuickSight has extra single quotes when string starts with hyphens

Question

Hi,

I'm creating a dashboard for operators to download the athena query results.
The ID column values contain hyphens `-` and

For example, if table contains the following data

| id | name |
| --- | --- |
| `-xyz` | `First example` |
| `a-b-c` | `Second example` |

The generated csv contains a extra single quote in the id column at the first row

```csv
"id","name"
"'-xyz","First example"
"a-b-c","Second example"
```

Is there any way to avoid it?

Answer

The single quote in front of the hyphen is intentional to escape the character when the file is opened using excel. If there is no single quote, the cell would have an error in excel when the data is opened. Here is a workaround if you don't want the single quote. 
1. Create a calculated field in QuickSight (use this link - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/quicksight/latest/user/adding-a-calculated-field-analysis.html)
2. Use the concat function to add a space in front of the id field for e.g., concat(' ',id) then use this calculated field for your output.

id	name
`-xyz`	`First example`
`a-b-c`	`Second example`

CSV file downloaded from QuickSight has extra single quotes when string starts with hyphens

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