CSV files

[Gerald]

Whenever I produce a report in CSV format, Excel refuses to treat it as a proper CSV file. It looks okay, there are items in quotations marks, separated by commas, but I can't get Excel to recognise it as such. Is it to do with leading spaces in the report format?

I've even tried renaming it as a ".txt" file, and importing the file that way. The only way I can get it to work is to use the double quotes as a delimiter.

Also - is there any way of stripping off the room and floor entries in the report? I would like just a flat list of computers & relevent details. Possible?

[Nick]

Whenever I produce a report in CSV format, Excel refuses to treat it as a proper CSV file. It looks okay, there are items in quotations marks, separated by commas, but I can't get Excel to recognise it as such. Is it to do with leading spaces in the report format?

I've even tried renaming it as a ".txt" file, and importing the file that way. The only way I can get it to work is to use the double quotes as a delimiter.

Also - is there any way of stripping off the room and floor entries in the report? I would like just a flat list of computers & relevent details. Possible?

This is a known problem with CSV and microsoft's constant changing of its format. We use one standard which works with some versions of Excel (I do not have a definitive list as microsoft have not documented which versions work with what standards).

The problem normally occurs when trying to open the CSV directly from the download. If you ask your browser to save the file to disk first. Then open Excel and import the data you normally get a dialog that gives you the abilitiy to specfiy different import options (such as delimiters etc) at which point you should be able to tweak the values until it understands the file.

Currently there is no way to do what you ask with the reports but we will add it to our list of current updates we need to make.

[Gerald]

Thanks, Nick. Interchange formats, eh? Who'd 'ave 'em?