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openoffice.org package

Tab delimited files and text delimiters

Asked by Doug McNutt

Copy and paste tab delimited text from gedit or importing such a file into a spreadsheet goes to a dialog that offers tab delimiting but also insists on either a single or double quote as a text delimiter. I need a "none" option there. The file in question has quoted text in email addresses that I want to leave that way. It also finds single quotes as apostrophes in subject lines.

What happens is that the import finds what it thinks is a text delimiter - as in csv files - and skips the next tabs and even returns until a closing delimiter is found.

I need a "none" option!

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Solved by:
Larry Jordan
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Best Larry Jordan (larryjor) said : 		#1

     You mention 'copy and paste'... did you try to open the file directly as a text import with csv? I'm not seeing the problem when I use file->open and set file type to "Text CSV" ... though I would agree it should work either way.

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Doug McNutt (dmcnutt) said : 		#2

Thanks Larry Jordan, that solved my question.

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Doug McNutt (dmcnutt) said : 		#3

Well. I just spent some time typing and got trapped by yet another GUI problem. I poked the "solved" button and all my typing disappeared.

No I did not try opening the file as *.CSV. The file was created with a perl script that looks at my mail history and the columns are separated by \t characters in plain ASCII. The copy and paste try was a way to avoid the Text Input dialog box which comes up anyway. I open the file sith this command:

gnome-open ~/projects/claws/mail.xls

Changing the file extension to *.TSV rather than *.XLS causes Open Office to open the file with a word processor.

But Larry did get me thinking. That selection box in the dialog with the pull down arrow is a case of spreadsheet style data validation, isn't it? I'm going to be limited to the available choices. Not so. And the HELP documents do say I can simply edit the text box with mouse and keyboard. Making the box empty - a null character? - apparently turns off the text delimiting that was causing my problems.

If anyone is listening what's needed is for the dialog box to preset the text delimiter box to something that just turns off delimiting which is really the only thing one needs for *.TSV. One really can't have tab characters inside of a spreadsheet cell.

My problem is solved but the interface needs work. And. . . CSV needs to be standardized so that banks and brokers can send files that work without preprocessing with perl. But that's another thread. For now, it's working.