Apologies in advance if this is a dumb question, but how does one export a field which can have multiple values?

 

For example: in my library database I have a checkbox field where the user can check more than one genre:

 

[] Mystery

[] Thriller

[] Romance

[] Paranormal

 

Etc.

 

A book can be a  Romance and a Mystery.

 

But when I export the field, I get something like this:

 

MysteryRomance

 

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

SB

Hi SB,

 

How would you like the results to be exported?  Do you want each selection as a separate record or do you want a multiline or do you want the values separated with comma?

One more question ... what export method gives you that result?  All I can get is separated by either a space or pound sign or, if Excel, multiline.  If your field was accidentally a number, all I get is 0 of course.  I didn't try all export methods however (such as db).   I'm just curious about your method or possibly your text editor for viewing the results.  :-)

But when I export the field, I get something like this:

 

MysteryRomance

 

Actually, what you get is:

 

Mystery◊Romance

 

where the ◊ symbol represents the (invisible) vertical tab character. (ASCII code 11). Filemaker reserves the return character as a record delimiter, and all in-field carriage returns are substituted with VTs.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Well, that depends on what exactly do you want and what your target application can accept. My preference is to export as XML and format the result exactly the way I want it by using a custom XSLT stylesheet; you can find an example here:

http://fmforums.com/forum/topic/57233-converting-carriage-returns/?p=270472

 

For some other options, see

http://fmforums.com/forum/topic/70694-new-line-in-csv-file-how/?p=334816

SOLVED. Stupid user error (me!)

 

Thanks very much for offering to help, LaRetta. I really appreciate it.

 

Your questions led me to uncover the problem and figure out a solution.

 

I had been exporting a text file and had been adding the text "Genre: " in front of the contents of the genre field. It turns out that the various genres are each on their own lines and that caused the mess. I added in some text parsing to change the paragraph breaks to commas and now everything works perfectly.

 

Thanks again!

what export method gives you that result?

 

Comma-Separated Text format

Merge format

Tab-Separated Text format

Thanks, Comment -- I was exporting as text, but I am interested in exporting as XML in the future, so I will review your links. So much to learn!