Exporting return delimited text to excel, as comma delimited

[Sholly]

Hi there,

I have several fields that contain return delimited values. Currently, when I export to Excel the values show up delimited by returns (as would be expected). I would like the values in the list to be separated by commas instead. Is there a way to do this? Thanks for you help.

[Lee Smith]

You have several options when exporting text.

Do a search in the [color:blue]User Guide that came with your application disk, or search the [color:blue]Online Help that is available when FileMaker is open, using [color:blue]Supported import/export file formats

You can use Comma, Tab, Excel, and others. Read the descriptions of what each will provide, and select the one that works best for your use.

Personally, I like the Tab Delimited Export, as it works well with the other programs I use.

Lee

Edited April 13, 2009 by Guest

[Sholly]

When I export into excel as comma delimited, instead of commas I get little boxes with ? marks where the commas should be.

[Lee Smith]

I have no idea why you are getting the [color:red]?, unless it has to do with the type of data and the format of the cell?

Read the descriptions of what each will provide, and select the one that works best for your use.

I should have also said. Experiment with the different formats (i.e. try them all) and see what works for you.

Personally, I like the Tab Delimited Export, as it works well with the other programs I use

Try it and see if you get a different result.

Lee

[comment]

When I export into excel as comma delimited, instead of commas I get little boxes with ? marks where the commas should be.

Did you perhaps mean to say "when I export as comma delimited, instead of carriage returns I get little boxes with ? marks where the returns should be"? Because that would be expected: carriage returns are reserved as record separators and if a field contains any, they will be converted into vertical tabs.

[Sholly]

Yes! Thank you for clarifying my problem. It seems I am getting "verticle tabs" or "ASCII 29/11 as the repeating field delimeter" (I've been doing some snooping on google).

I have several repeating fields, and I am trying to export them to Excel. I want the values in the repeating fields to be separated by commas in Excel, not the ASCII symbol. I don't seem to be able to do a find/replace in Excel to get them turned into commas. Sigh... I'm sure I'm making this way too difficult.

[Lee Smith]

I have several repeating fields, and I am trying to export them to Excel. .

Now that would have been nice to know in the beginning

Do a search for [color:blue]+export +Repeating +Fields, and you will find a lot of Threads on this topic.

Lee

[comment]

You could define a calculation field (result is Text) =

Substitute ( List ( RepeatingField ) ; ¶ ; ", " )

and export it instead of the repeating field.

Note that this is a patch, not a cure: the real issue here seems to be your using repeating fields where you shouldn't.