Carriage returns!!

[Gabe]

How do I handle importing and exporting fields whose values contain carriage returns? When I export them to a tab file, the CRs screw up the formatting.

I am also trying to import some, and the CR is screwing up the process.

How do I deal with this?

[Vaughan]

Are you opening the files in Excel? Excel does some horrific things to text files, usually doing conversions based on bad assumptions about data format without any prompting.

Open the file in a text editor to really see what's happening in the exported text file.

FMP usually exports carriage returns as vertical bar "|" characters. It converts them back to carriage returns when importing. Refer to the TechInfo article 108483 "Expected Embedded Characters in FileMaker Pro Export Files" for more info.

[Gabe]

No, I am exporting files to tab delimited files, and opening them in simple text mode viewers such as notepad. I have some data from an old non FM system that we are trying to import, and the data has newline returns in some of the data fields. We tried changing the CRs to "|" like you said, but that didn't work, it simply imported the | as part of the field.

[Vaughan]

Are you rinning FMP 7.0v3?

[comment]

Ah, confusion... When you export as tab or comma delimited text, the in-fields CR are replaced by vertical tabs. This "|" is NOT a vertical tab character.

A vertical tab is a non-printing character, ASCII code 11, while this "|" is a vertical line character, ASCII code 124.

[Vaughan]

Arrrgh, confusion indeed!

You are correct: vertical tab character, not vertical bar character.