Ultimately I guess my Excel issues probably concern a more global desire for predictability of CSV format across products, which will probably seem mundane to you. Not that MS is the only player I have run into with these issues in the not-daily experiences I've had with this.

The Excel '97 on my laptop will export everything separated by a comma, unless there's a comma within the field (cell), whereupon it exports that cell (and only that cell) with double quote delimiters. It also offers me no controls to set preferences for this export type.

OTOH, my memory of it is that MS's FoxPro products seem to prefer to use double quote delimiters on all fields, Outlook exports with double quotes on all fields, but Outlook Express seems to export with commas only, just as examples. go figure. The other side of this is for me has been that over the years, various products I would use to import a file expected a CSV file to be in one or another structure (double quotes, no quotes, etc.)

StarOffice products offers chooices on all the characteristics of these exports, which I of course admire and wish other products did the same.


In reply to Re: Re (tilly) 6: csv output by tjh
in thread csv output by Anonymous Monk

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