Hi @ShaneGero
We’ve seen this before and you’re right; it is an issue with the way Excel formats its cells. It looks like validating entries for the occurrence ID field is already an accepted feature request, though it’s specifically in relation to preventing duplicate IDs: Bulk upload - occurrence ID validation
There are faster ways to get Excel to cooperate that I’ve found helpful for past troubleshooting:
Even though this page says the steps will fix dates, it works for the randomly included decimals and symbols, too.