Sometimes after downloading a CSV or Excel file from a QuickSight visual, Windows cannot open the file.
It shows this message: “Sorry, we couldn’t find [file]. Is it possible it was moved, renamed or deleted?”
The issue seems to be that the visuals are numbered using brackets like “[1] Visual A”, “[2] Visual B”, etc.
And something has changed in Windows that causes a problem finding the downloaded files.
If trying to open “[1] Visual A.csv”, the error message will be. “Sorry, we couldn’t find 1…”.
I haven’t found any official documentation to explain this, but my local test finds that if a filename BEGINS with “[” (square bracket), Windows reads the request as ONLY the contents of the brackets, so it can’t find the requested file.
Renaming the downloaded file to remove the opening bracket works.
I’m posting this to share my findings. If anyone has an explanation or more info, please share.