excel / import

[Lerebours, Jose]

Jeff advised:

> > 
> > I need to import an database from excel.
> > When I save in .csv I don't get the needed open
> > field delimiter and close
> > delimiter.
> > my file looks like this;
> > data1,data2,data3,
> > 
> > does anyone know how to get the data to look like
> > this?
> > 
> > "data1","data2","data3"
> > 
> > I am having problems because some of the data has
> > commas in it.
> > TIA
> > Steve
> 
> Steve, it appears that excel WILL put the quotes
> around the data if the data contains a comma.  Try it
> with some data that contains a comma and look at that
> row/column to verify this.  If you use filepro's
> import word command on this type of file it should
> work OK.
> 

I believe that it should work even if he uses

import ascii ifile = [_SOURCE_FILE_] f=, r=\n o=" c="

The fact the f=, tells filePro to split fields based on
the existence of a comma, it will just fine in the 
absence of the quotes.

And you are right, excel does exactly that (even with
text fields).

Of course, you are likely to run into problem if your
data contains quote within

  SAMPLE:  30' 6" PVC Pipe

Then your options change and some more programming work
or data editing might be required.

I think there is a way to tell excel to use a special
character as the field separator (I know my colleagues in
South America have it set to use a semicolon in lieu of 
a comma - Then again, commas are used in lieu of period
for $$$ and numeric fields).

Any way, a strating import ascii should work as shown
above.  Since the introduction of read(), open() ... I
rarely ever use import command.

Regards;



Jose Lerebours