I didn't explain the problem correctly, I want (need) the comma's. The
program I wrote is to load data from a CSV into a DB. The first thing I do
is check the number of fields in the record, if there are too few, or too
many, I skip the record. Our client said they were getting a lot of skipped
records, and the skipped records were similar to records that weren't being
skipped. I asked for the file they were using & found this problem. The
article you cited does explain the behavior, thanx.. I will suggest to my
boss that he instructs the clients to put a space in the last field of any
record that doesn't have data (all fields are trimmed before processing).

Thanx Again,
Scot P

"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
Saved from a previous post:

This might describe the problem of too many commas in CSV files:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=77295
Column Delimiters Missing in Spreadsheet Saved as Text

(It actually describes missing delimiter, but if some are "missing", maybe
the
ones appearing are "extra".)

(But a lot of programs (excel included) don't care about those extra
columns.
Maybe you don't have to care, either???)

Maybe you could write your own exporting program that would behave exactly
the
way you want:

Here are three sites that you could steal some code from:

Earl Kiosterud's Text Write program:
www.smokeylake.com/excel
(or directly: http://www.smokeylake.com/excel/text_write_program.htm)

Chip Pearson's:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/imptext.htm

J.E. McGimpsey's:
http://www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/textfiles.html

(or maybe you could build your own formula and copy|paste into Notepad.)

In G1:
=a1
In G2:
=a2&","&b2&","&c2&","&d2&","&e2&","&f2
then drag down.

You may need to insert additional quotes or formatting:

=a2&","&text(b2,"mm/dd/yyyy")&....

ScotP wrote:

When I save a spreadsheet as CSV, and some of the fields at the end
of
the row are empty (ie row 1 has 10 fields, and subsequent rows have <10
fields), some rows have consecutive comma's at the end of the row for
the
empty fields, and some do not. Anyone see/hear of this behavior? I'm
using
Excel 2002 SP3.

To reproduce the problem, try entering 1 - 5 in cells A1 - E1, then
enter 1 & 2 in columns A & B for the next 20 rows. Save as CSV, and
open in
notepad, rows 2 - 16 have three comma's at the end, & rows starting at
17 do
not. The problem always starts at row 17 for me.

--

Dave Peterson