The simple question is - when I export data out of FMP as a csv file - the carriage returns, i.e. hence all paragraph breaks, disappear.

New to me, I assume the more complex question is in the character set encoding and how data is read in the target application. In fmp Help it states that in "csv export, carriage returns export as vertical tabs" - I don't understand what that means.

The data is eventually being uploaded to a PHP database, but, at this stage, I'm trying to read the csv data in TextEdit, in order to isolate what I am exporting out of fmp.

Any comments, helpful hints, explanations, or advice will be appreciated.

Mona

in pretty much all text data formats the carriage return is reserved to mean end-of-record. So returns in your data need to be substituted for something else to keep your records intact. FMI chose the Vertical Tab for this (ascii 11). The character encoding is not going to change anything to that.

In your PHP code you can easily substitute out the ascii 11 and replace it with Ascii 10 (LF) if you need Mac line endings, Ascii 13 (CR) if you need Unix line endings or Ascii 13+Ascii10 (CRLF) if you need Windows line endings