Issue reading field as numeric in CSV file

[AllisonHawley]

Hello-

I am a new user of ArcMap, and am having trouble displaying lat/long data from a CSV file. GIS is reading these data as strings rather than numbers.  I checked the fields in the CSV to make sure there were no special characters, no commas, text or spaces.  I even reformatted the cells in excel from general to numeric.  Most advice that I have found online is to add 2 new fields to the table and use the field calculator to convert the strings to numbers.  However, you cannot add a field to a CSV file in ArcMap (it is grayed out).  So...how can add these coordinates as a map layer?  

Thanks,

Allison

[StephenM]

It looks like your CSV should work as it is, but if you need to add and calculate new fields you can use the Table to Table tool to convert the CSV to a geodatabase table or dBASE table. These formats will allow you to add and calculate fields.