CSV dropping last comma for all lines after line 15

[Guest]

Hi there, I hope someone has seen this before and knows the fix! We have a
csv file format that we use to upload data to our custom system. The last 3
columns in the file are optional so they can sometimes be blank. We have
noticed that Excel is dropping the last comma on the lines beyond data line
15. So for example, I have a file with a header row and 20 rows of data. Say
all these data rows have the last 3 columns blank. If I save the file in CSV
and upload it, the system fails the upload since the lines 16 and beyond have
a missing comma! So I open the file in notepad to see what's up and I notice
that data lines 1 - 15 end with 3 commas ,,, since the columns were blank.
But the data lines 16-20 only had 2 commas! The last comma dropped!!

It is consistently happening with every file I have that has more than 15
lines!

Thanks for your help.
KZ

 

[Dave Peterson]

Maybe you could just put a formula that evaluates to "" in the last column of
the rows that are empty.

=""

Select the range in the last column
edit|goto|special|blanks
(ok)
type
=""
and hit ctrl-enter

Then try saving the file as a CSV file.

 

[Guest]

Dave,
Thanks so much for the suggestion. It worked for me. I can use that as a
manual workaround for now. Ideally, though, I would like to know if this is a
bug and if there is a fix if so...
Again, thanks for the info!
Karine

 

[Dave Peterson]

Saved from a previous post:

This might describe the problem of too many commas in CSV files:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=77295
Column Delimiters Missing in Spreadsheet Saved as Text

(It actually describes missing delimiter, but if some are "missing", maybe the
ones appearing are "extra".)

(But a lot of programs (excel included) don't care about those extra columns.
Maybe you don't have to care, either???)

Maybe you could write your own exporting program that would behave exactly the
way you want:

Here are three sites that you could steal some code from:

Earl Kiosterud's Text Write program:
www.smokeylake.com/excel
(or directly: http://www.smokeylake.com/excel/text_write_program.htm)

Chip Pearson's:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/imptext.htm

J.E. McGimpsey's:
http://www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/textfiles.html

(or maybe you could build your own formula and copy|paste into Notepad.)

 

[Guest]

This is great info Dave. Thanks for your quick responses! I will forward this
info to my tech team to see if they can re-use. thanks again.