Saving as tab delimited file

Originally Posted by Darth_Beckett

I am new to these forums and haven't searched through threads much so let me apologize if this has already been answered numerous times.

I frequently save .xls sheets as tab and comma delimited files for uploading to a database. When saving as a tab delimited, excel loves to put quotation marks EVERYWHERE. Everywhere I have a " it wants to put another one, then another behind the text in that cell. If i have a dimensions field like 12 x 12 it likes to put "12 x "12....and if I call it 12" x 12"...well that's a whole other can of worms.

What 3rd party products are out there and work well for eliminating the step of me saving as tab delimited, opening it up in wordpad, and find/replace hundreds of " marks?

Thanks

Hi,

Excel, in general, follows the standard for saving .csv etc files, that is, any cell which has what might be considered 'control' characters (ie, comma and quotes) are enclosed in quotes, and a quote character is doubled to distinguish it from the open-close pair, thus 12" would save as "12"""

Most programs receiving .csv type files recognise this and receive the file accordingly.

Does your Database program have the facility to export data as .csv?
If so then it should also import the file corrently.

hth
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Originally Posted by Darth_Beckett

Well the database in question is Miva Merchant 5. When importing to it, it breaks down tab delimited files and lets you select from a pull-down menu for each cell what you want that information stored as (product_code, Name, Price, etc.).

When importing, all of the quotation marks are scattered throughout the cells and WILL be copied onto the web page as shown. I've seen a product sold called ExcelErate, that claims to clean the double quotations, but sometimes I have quotations around all sorts of data.

Unfortunately the Miva Merchant 5 appears to not follow industry standards in relation to files such as .csv files, in that it does not permit the delimiter to also be present as a part of the data in it's 'flat files', most other programs do.

Perhaps there is a Miva Merchant users group with their own information as to how to deal with this shortcoming.

Another possibility is that you exclude from your data all items which cause quotes.

hth
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