Capable CSV Tool... or make Excel not be "smart"

You don't get it. Or maybe I wasn't clear. It's the fact that it selectively
removes quotes around columns that annoys me. If you look at the "before"
and "after" case, you can see that it removed the quotes for most of the
columns, and only kept those along the field which contains commas.



"Mark Lincoln" <mlincoln@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:1142353434.025102.244750@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> cosmin wrote:
> ----------
> "0","Freeware","WinXP,Windows2000,Windows2003","1989",
> After working with it in Excel it gets turned into this:
>
> 0,Freeware,"WinXP,Windows2000,Windows2003",1989,
>
> As you can see, only some of the fields now have quotes, (why? It's
> Excel being smart again and making the CSV inconsistent)
> ----------
>
> I don't see inconsistency here. The imported data without quotes were
> surrounded with quotes in the CSV file. Excel removes the quotes when
> data is presented this way. The imported fields still containing
> quotes only contain one double-quote character each:
>
> "WinXP
>
> Windows2003"
>
> and Excel imported them as is as it cannot be determined that they are
> not part of the data.
>
> (If you expected to see a field like:
>
> WinXP,Windows2000,Windows2003
>
> it won't happen because the commas are delimiters.)
>

I think all the apps I've tried so far have problems with line breaks in the
content


I have a row which looks like this:

,"579","90","font renamer, freeware renamer, fonts rename","Got a font
collection? Got a collection, but no order in it? Start by giving font files
the names corresponding to the full font names. For example, you can rename
MLON_I.TTF to Milion Italic.ttf. This name speaks for itself, it is simple
and clear.

How to do it?

Easily. Select a folder with fonts and click the Rename button. That's all.
The program itself will find out which font each file contains and give it
the corresponding
name.","http://www.styopkin.com/free_font_renamer.html","http://www.styopkin.com/images/Screenshots/Screenshot-Free-Font-Renamer-256-192.gif","http://www.styopkin.com/PAD-Free-Font-Renamer.xml","http://www.styopkin.com/FreeFontRenamerSetup.exe","none","0","90","none","none","none","none","90","90","90","Graphic
Apps::Font Tools","Font Tools,Fonts Tools,Font,Fonts","90","Give each font a
name that speaks for itself.","Give each font a name that speaks for itself
with one click! Batch Font
Renamer.","http://www.styopkin.com/images/ICO_FFR.gif",NULLHow to do it?

Easily. Select a folder with fonts and click the Rename button. That's all.
The program itself will find out which font each file contains and give it
the corresponding name.",,NULL


This, and other rows like this break Excel. It makes a mess of my sheet when
importing.
Any way I can get it to ignore line breaks in content?



"cosmin" <dummyaddress@erewhon.com> wrote in message
news:uqrDX44RGHA.4456@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> You don't get it. Or maybe I wasn't clear. It's the fact that it
> selectively removes quotes around columns that annoys me. If you look at
> the "before" and "after" case, you can see that it removed the quotes for
> most of the columns, and only kept those along the field which contains
> commas.
>
>
>
> "Mark Lincoln" <mlincoln@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:1142353434.025102.244750@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>> cosmin wrote:
>> ----------
>> "0","Freeware","WinXP,Windows2000,Windows2003","1989",
>> After working with it in Excel it gets turned into this:
>>
>> 0,Freeware,"WinXP,Windows2000,Windows2003",1989,
>>
>> As you can see, only some of the fields now have quotes, (why? It's
>> Excel being smart again and making the CSV inconsistent)
>> ----------
>>
>> I don't see inconsistency here. The imported data without quotes were
>> surrounded with quotes in the CSV file. Excel removes the quotes when
>> data is presented this way. The imported fields still containing
>> quotes only contain one double-quote character each:
>>
>> "WinXP
>>
>> Windows2003"
>>
>> and Excel imported them as is as it cannot be determined that they are
>> not part of the data.
>>
>> (If you expected to see a field like:
>>
>> WinXP,Windows2000,Windows2003
>>
>> it won't happen because the commas are delimiters.)
>>
>
>

> You don't get it. Or maybe I wasn't clear.

I misread your example. My apologies.

> It's the fact that it selectively
> removes quotes around columns that annoys
> me. If you look at the "before"
> and "after" case, you can see that it removed
> the quotes for most of the columns, and only
> kept those along the field which contains commas.

>From Excel97 Help:

"The CSV (Comma delimited) file format saves
only the text and values as they are displayed
in cells of the active worksheet. All rows and
all characters in each cell are saved. Columns
of data are separated by commas, and each
row of data ends in a carriage return. If a cell
contains a comma, the cell contents are
enclosed in double quotation marks."

The last sentence is the key here. Excel is apparently importing
fields with commas the same way it writes them. But in a quick test, I
can't make it do that; when I import such a field (from a .csv or a
..txt file) it throws out the quotation marks. Curious.