Yes, there is a way to avoid Excel from automatically converting phone numbers with a plus sign into exponential notation and stripping the plus sign. Follow these steps:

1. Open a new Excel workbook and click on the "Data" tab.
2. Click on "From Text/CSV" in the "Get & Transform Data" section.
3. Select the CSV file that contains the phone numbers with the plus sign and click on "Import".
4. In the "Text Import Wizard - Step 1 of 3" dialog box, select "Delimited" and click "Next".
5. In the "Text Import Wizard - Step 2 of 3" dialog box, select "Comma" as the delimiter and click "Next".
6. In the "Text Import Wizard - Step 3 of 3" dialog box, select the column that contains the phone numbers with the plus sign and select "Text" as the column data format. This will ensure that Excel treats the phone numbers as text and does not convert them to numbers. You can also select other columns and set their data format as needed. Click "Finish".
7. Excel will import the CSV file and display the phone numbers with the plus sign as text, without converting them to exponential notation or stripping the plus sign.

By following these steps, you can import the CSV file containing phone numbers with a plus sign into Excel while maintaining the plus sign and avoiding the automatic conversion to exponential notation.