1. Open a blank workbook

2. Enable the legacy Text Import Wizard as per [0]

3. Go to Data -> Get Data -> Legacy Wizards -> From Text (Legacy)

4. Set config based on your CSV file, typically select "Delimited" and "My data has headers" enabled

5. Click Next and pick the delimiter, typically "Comma"

6. Click Next and click the columns with UPCs, select "Text" in the "Column data format" area

7. Click Finish

(I'm not saying this is great, just sharing how to do it in case you don't know)

[0] https://professor-excel.com/import-csv-text-files-excel/

edit: you can also set up a PowerQuery query that will always open some CSV at some path and apply this config, but I don't want to have anything to do with PowerQuery, sorry.

Wow! I had no idea you could set data format on legacy text columns during import. I had thought the column preview was just that- not a selectable radio button that you can then apply column data formatting to.

Thanks for the instructions! It's cumbersome as heck, but it's better than nothing.

You can also access (pretty much) the same dialog via Data -> Text to Columns but you need to have some data already pasted in Excel.