excel butchering a CSV file

[Chris Strug]

HI,

I'm attempting to use Excel to process a CSV file which has been imported
from a Progress Database.

I import the file through the open text file wizard as a delimited file of
origin 437 (OEM United States), comma delimited with a text qualifier of
{none}, all fields formatted as general.

When I save the file from Excel as a CSV file it replaces every " with """.
For example, there is a row in the original file with a description
contained with in "'s - e.g. "Description". This becomes """Description""".

Likewise there are several empty fields which in the original export are "".
After excel has imported and saved the file it becomes """""".

Obviously there is a problem with the way that I'm telling Excel to format
the file when importing it, however nothing I try seems to work.

If I leave the text qualifier at " then excel strips out all of the quotes,
if I change it to "none" or "'" then it replaces " with """.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions as to how to get Excel to preserve
the formatting of the original CSV file or even better get Excel to ignore
formatting all together...

Any advice or suggestions are gratefully received.

Kind thanks

Chris.

 

[Earl Kiosterud]

Chris,

The extra quotes you see are normal, though not all programs can handle
them. You may bo OK with the csv saved from Excel -- the reading program
should convert the data back to "Description" as it originally was. See
www.smokeylake.com/excel/textfiles.htm. Read "Delimited text file."

 

[Chris Strug]

Chris,

The extra quotes you see are normal, though not all programs can handle
them. You may bo OK with the csv saved from Excel -- the reading program
should convert the data back to "Description" as it originally was. See
www.smokeylake.com/excel/textfiles.htm. Read "Delimited text file."

<snip.

Earl,

Many thanks, it does appear that the importing program does indeed manage
the multiple quotations correctly.

Thank you for your advice.

Chris.