Excel stuff

[Joe]

Not too sure what you mean, but it's for a scanline reading of a 44 digit code on a donation reply coupon and the data input from our file has to go in like a grid so even the empty cells have to fit in there.

Well I thought you were just talking about a regular csv file with text since your example read as:

Example: "John Smith","123 Main Street"," ", The last one there was from a blank cell. I know, this is a prepress forum, but some of the stuff i have to deal with nowadays is ridiculous. I googled it to death but couldn't figure it out. Figure the best program may not even be excel to deal with this, maybe a text editor? I found one that would put quotes but only if there was content, but not with the blank cells.

So now I have no idea what you are talking about so I will just stay out of the conversation.

[pspdfppdfxhd]

Okay, thanks for the feedback, i am not sure what i am talking about either actually, i retire from this conversation too.

[DigiCorn]

I thought it was Dan and not David.

Anyway, I know you can do a tab delimited and a comma delimited; is there a quote delimited csv option to write a file to? Otherwise, I echo the earlier post that says to do a search and replace with nothing.

[DCurry]

is there a quote delimited csv option to write a file to? Otherwise, I echo the earlier post that says to do a search and replace with nothing

I don't believe so. 

I don't think the problem is spaces in empty cells. I think his problem is he needs to supply a csv to the other vendor where every cell is wrapped in quotes, whether it has data or is null. 

[Joe]

The only way I can export a .csv file from Libre Office and have the empty cell is to put a space in it. My Calc document has a space in it to get the results below. If it is null or empty it doesn't include that cell in the .csv file.



Then exporting like this:



Which gives me this:

[pspdfppdfxhd]

That might do it, i will have to see if there is a way to get spaces in all the empty cells.

[DCurry]

Not sure why you want or need a space in an empty cell. If it's empty and wrapped in quotes it should just read "" when you open it in a text editor. 

Maybe I'm missing something. 

[pspdfppdfxhd]

Not sure why you want or need a space in an empty cell. If it's empty and wrapped in quotes it should just read "" when you open it in a text editor.

Maybe I'm missing something.

No I don't think you are missing anything. I filled all empty cells with a space then saved out of LibreOffice and it came out like this:    " " and it should be "".....I COULD do a find and replace to change them all but I really don't know if that's the right thing to do. I tried that and it looks like it worked. Could have screwed up something else though.

[Joe]

Not sure why you want or need a space in an empty cell. If it's empty and wrapped in quotes it should just read "" when you open it in a text editor.

Maybe I'm missing something.

If the cell is just blank it doesn't come out as "". It comes out with the ,, where the cell for "Something Else" is blank. No quotes. Like this:

[Joe]

OK to get it to look like this:



In the blank cells enter this formula: =""

[pspdfppdfxhd]

Hey Joe, I thought you retired!!
You just never stop trying.

Where are you putting this ="" formula in? LibreOffice?

[Joe]

Yes in Libre Office with the empty cell selected in the formula field as shown here:

[pspdfppdfxhd]

Initial testing seems to show that worked like magic!

My only issue is going through and finding all the blanks, there are 15,000 addresses in there.

[DCurry]

At my old shop if all the fields were wrapped with quotes an empty value showed as ,"",

[Joe]

Initial testing seems to show that worked like magic!

My only issue is going through and finding all the blanks, there are 15,000 addresses in there.

Yeah that is going to be a problem since you can't do a search for an empty field and replace it with something else in LibreOffice. Probably the best option would be go ahead and make the .csv file and then open the .csv file in a text editor and search for ,, and replace with ,"", assuming of course there aren't any fields that have a double comma in it.

At my old shop if all the fields were wrapped with quotes an empty value showed as ,"",

You mean if you entered "" in the field? If so he would still have to manually enter it in all blank fields. Or do you mean empty fields would export as ,"",? If so were you using Excel or something like LibreOffice?