I have a csv file which is comma separated. But in my machine, the value in "List Separator" in "Regions and Language" option in control panel has value as semicolon (;). I can not change this semicolon value in setting due to other reasons.
When I try to save my file as csv after editing, it becomes semicolon separated due to the value in system settings.
Is it possible to override the system setting by mentioning the delimiter value in the file itself ? So that when I save this file as csv, the separator still remains comma and not semicolon. Can I use sep=, somehow.
Try writing a macro that saves the file
ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs "filename", FileFormat:=xlCSV, local:=False
The latter (local:=False) makes sure the default separator (comma) is used instead of the one specified within the local settings.
Azure ML support says to me that delimiter must be comma, this would cause too much hassle with data having semicolon as separator and with a lot of commas in the cell values.
So how to process semicolon separated CSV files in Azure ML?
Azure ML only accepts the comma , separated CSV. Do a little work around.
Open your data file using a text editor. (Notepad will do the trick). Find and replace all semicolons with 'tab' (Make it a TSV) and the commas in data values may not occur a problem then. Make sure to define that the input is a TSV; not a CSV.
I want to import data from an excel sheet into a MySQL database with the MySQL for Excel plugin. In some cells are texts with semicolons and I already figured out this causes a SQL error. I tried escaping the semicolons with backslash but I still get the error message. How can I escape the semicolon?
Kai,
this behaviour is purely the fault of MySQL for Excel, and seem to be a bug.
In the meantime, if you are not keen on changing your Excel data as suggested by others there is a workaround:
In your MySQL-for-Excel window click Options and then select Preview SQL statements before they are sent to the server and Accept.
Then proceed as normal with export / append data using the Add-in, but when a Review SQL script window appears, copy the contents into a different SQL tool (MySQL workbench, HeidiSQL, SQLWorkbench etc), and run. Then click cancel in the Mysql-for-Excel popups, and refresh the query if necessary.
Also: feel free to report the bug at: http://bugs.mysql.com/
Replace the semicolon with some unique text e.g. [SEMICOLON].
Next import the data to SQL and run something like
UPDATE your_table
SET your_field = REPLACE(your_field, '[SEMICOLON]', ';')
WHERE your_field LIKE '%[SEMICOLON]%'
I think all you need to do is consider the requirements Excel has when it imports data from CSV files (the parsing rules are probably the same or similar)
In your case, if a field contains any special characters, just quote the values with double quotes before importing the content in Excel.
So:
UPDATE table
SET field = '"' || field || '"'
WHERE field like '%,%'
The following rules should apply:
Fields containing a line-break, double-quote, and/or commas should be quoted
Any field may be quoted (with double quotes)
A (double) quote character in a field must be represented by two (double) quote characters.
More details: Wikipedia: Comma-separated values
I need to export some data to MS Excel. I laod the data to the ByteArray and then I print it to the file. Nevertheless I wasn't able to find out, how to switch to next column. I tried '\t', "\t", Char(9) and many others, but what I get in excel file is only unknown character symbol ... "\n" works just fine...
I'm programming this app in AS3, if it could have any connection..
CSV stands for "comma separated values". The default delimiter for columns is the comma (,).
Also, you can designate what character you want to use as the column delimiter (tabs, for example), when importing to excel
Take this XLS file
I then save this XLS file as CSV and then open it up with a text editor. This is what I see:
Col1,Col2,Col3,Col4,Col5,Col6,Col7
1,ABC,"AB""C","D,E",F,03,"3,2"
I see that the double quote character in column C was stored as AB""C, the column value was enclosed with quotations and the double quote character in the data was replaced with 2 double quote characters to indicate that the quote is occurring within the data and not terminating the column value. I also see that the value for column G, 3,2, is enclosed in quotes so that it is clear that the comma occurs within the data rather than indicating a new column. So far, so good.
I am a little surprised that all of the column values are not enclosed by quotes but even this seems reasonable OK when I assume that EXCEL only specifies column delimieters when special characters like a commad or a dbl quote character exists in the data.
Now I try to use SQL Server to import the csv file. Note that I specify a double quote character as the Text Qualifier character.
And a command char as the Column delimiter character. However, note that SSIS imports column 3 incorrectly,eg, not translating the two consecutive double quote characters as a single occurence of a double quote character.
What do I have to do to get Excel and SSIS to get along?
Generally people avoid the issue by using column delimiter chactacters that are LESS LIKELY to occur in the data but this is not a real solution.
I find that if I modify the file from this
Col1,Col2,Col3,Col4,Col5,Col6,Col7
1,ABC,"AB""C","D,E",F,03,"3,2"
...to this:
Col1,Col2,Col3,Col4,Col5,Col6,Col7
1,ABC,"AB"C","D,E",F,03,"3,2"
i.e, removing the two consecutive quotes in column C's value, that the data is loaded properly, however, this is a little confusing to me. First of all, how does SSIS determine that the double quote between the B and the C is not terminating that column value? Is it because the following characters are not a comma column delimiter or a row delimiter (CRLF)? And why does Excel export it this way?
According to Wikipedia, here are a couple of traits of a CSV file:
Fields containing line breaks (CRLF), double quotes, and commas
should be enclosed in double-quotes. For example:
"aaa","b CRLF
bb","ccc" CRLF
zzz,yyy,xxx
If double-quotes are used to enclose fields, then a double-quote
appearing inside a field must be escaped by preceding it with
another double quote. For example:
"aaa","b""bb","ccc"
However, it looks like SSIS doesn't like it that way when importing. What can be done to get Excel to create a CSV file that could contain ANY special characters used as column delimiters, text delimiters or row delimiters in the data? There's no reason that it can't work using the approach specified in Wikipedia,. which is what I thought the old MS DTS packages used to do...
Update:
If I use Notepad change the input file to
Col1,Col2,Col3,Col4,Col5,Col6,Col7,Col8
"1","ABC","AB""C","D,E","F","03","3,2","AB""C"
Excel reads it just fine
but SSIS returns
The preview sample contains embedded text qualifiers ("). The flat file parser does not support embedding text qualifiers in data. Parsing columns that contain data with text qualifiers will fail at run time.
Conclusion:
Just like the error message says in your update...
The flat file parser does not support embedding text qualifiers in data. Parsing columns that contain data with text qualifiers will fail at run time.
Confirmed bug in Microsoft Connect. I encourage everyone reading this to click on this aforementioned link and place your vote to have them fix this stinker. This is in the top 10 of the most egregious bugs I have encountered.
Do you need to use a comma delimiter.
I used a pipe delimiter with no Text qualifier and it worked fine. Here is my output form the text file.
1|ABC|AB"C|D,E|F|03|3,2
You have 3 options in my opinion.
Read the data into a stage table.
Run any update queries you need on the columns
Now select your data from the stage table and output it to a flat file.
OR
Use pipes are you delimiters.
OR
Do all of this in a C# application and build it in code.
You could send the row to a script in SSIS and parse and build the file you want there as well.
Using text qualifiers and "character" delimited fields is problematic for sure.
Have Fun!