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#1
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Excel CSV Files; Creating Of
Hello,
I have created a small Excel file that I wish to be saved as a CSV. Question: do I have to put " marks around the beginning, and end, of the text in each cell, or does Excel automatically do what is required for CSV when I tell it to Save As a CSV ? I did not put any " marks around any text, and when I opened it up in Notepad++, there were a single set of double quotes (e.g., "Bob") marks around the text. Is the initial Excel file I created without any " text marks a "true" CSV ? Or,...? Working with, and creating, a CSV seems a bit confusing, at least to me. I did read many of the CSV articles via a Google, but still not too clear. Any clarifications on what is exactly required when creating in Excel would be most appreciated. Thanks, Bob |
#2
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Excel CSV Files; Creating Of
Hi Bob,
Am Tue, 19 Nov 2013 14:27:40 -0500 schrieb Bob: I have created a small Excel file that I wish to be saved as a CSV. Question: do I have to put " marks around the beginning, and end, of the text in each cell, or does Excel automatically do what is required for CSV when I tell it to Save As a CSV ? there is no need to put quote marks around the text. If your separator is into the text of a cell Excel put quote marks around the text of that cell automatically. Regards Claus B. -- Win XP PRof SP2 / Vista Ultimate SP2 Office 2003 SP2 /2007 Ultimate SP2 |
#3
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Excel CSV Files; Creating Of
Adding to Claus' reply...
CSV stands for Comma Separated Values. That precludes, then, that you values should not contain commas. But if they do happen to contain commas then Excel will wrap those values in quotes to indicate the contained comma is not a delimiter. IMO, it's best to replace contained commas with another character when creating CSVs using SaveAs. Preferably, I'd dump the data into an array and write that to a text file with a .csv extension (after replacing contained commas, OR using a different delimiter so the contained comma issue is mute)! This avoids having to deal with (or code for) Excel's built-in export/import issues because it allows using standard VB[A] I/O functions. -- Garry Free usenet access at http://www.eternal-september.org Classic VB Users Regroup! comp.lang.basic.visual.misc microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com |
#4
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Excel CSV Files; Creating Of
"Bob" wrote:
I have created a small Excel file that I wish to be saved as a CSV. Question: do I have to put " marks around the beginning, and end, of the text in each cell, or does Excel automatically do what is required for CSV when I tell it to Save As a CSV ? Excel puts double-quotes around text where Excel deems it is necessary. Generally, that is text that contains the CSV separator (usually comma) and text that contains double-quotes. However, there might be other situations. "Bob" wrote: I did not put any " marks around any text, and when I opened it up in Notepad++, there were a single set of double quotes (e.g., "Bob") marks around the text. That is odd. Excel does not double-quote simple text like Bob when I try it, even if the cell is formatted as Text. "Bob" wrote: Is the initial Excel file I created without any " text marks a "true" CSV ? Or,...? Yes, as long as columnar data is separated using commas (or the List Separator configured in the Regional and Language Options control panel). "Bob" wrote: Working with, and creating, a CSV seems a bit confusing, at least to me. I did read many of the CSV articles via a Google, but still not too clear. Understandably so. Creating (saving to) CSV files should not be confusing. But getting Excel to interpret (read) CSV files as you intended might be tricky. In particular, even if you surround text with double-quotes, Excel still might not interpret the data as text. For example, "000123" is interpreted as a number and the cell is formatted as General. So the leading zeros will not appear in Excel by default, despite the double-quotes in the CSV file. Sometimes, we must import the CSV file instead of opening it directly using Excel. By "import", I mean: use the Get External Data / From Text operation. That allows us to specify a column of data to be formatted as Text (or Date), not General. However, even that might not be sufficient if the data to be treated as text is not columnar, and Excel insists on interpreting it as numeric. Other applications might interpret (read) the CSV file differently, always treating the double-quoted data as text. There are no standards for reading a CSV file. Only for writing it (RFC 4180). |
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