CSV file convert

[Guest]

I have recently upgraded to Word 2003. Previously I could take a text CSV
file, load into Word, select all and then convert text to table. My CSV file
contains commas to seperate each field but the last field has a carriage
return, the file is created by my clinical system software. Previous versions
of Word have accepted this as a field seperator and have converted the file
to a table correctly. However, Word 2003 seems to ignore the carriage return
so adds the last field of the record to the first field on the next record to
make one field, thereby putting each subsequent record out of sync by one
field each time.
Any ideas?

 

[Jay Freedman]

As far as I'm aware, nothing has changed in this feature between versions of
Word.

It sounds like the "carriage returns" in your CSV file aren't being
recognized by Word as real paragraph marks. As a diagnostic step, take a
copy of the document and run Table > Sort on the plain text (it doesn't have
to be in a table for this). If it complains that "Word found no valid
records to sort", then that's the problem.

To fix it, open the Edit > Replace dialog. In the Find What box, enter the
code

^013

In the Replace With box, enter the code

^p

Click the Replace All button. Nothing will change on the screen, but it may
replace the unrecognized carriage returns with real paragraph marks. Then
try converting to a table.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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[Guest]

Thanks Jay that worked perfectly.
Just as a matter of interest I took the original file to a PC in the next
office which is running Word 2000 and the problem does not arise there - it
happily finds the end of the record and splits it correctly, however I will
report to my software support company that the end of the record needs to be
a real paragraph mark.
Regards,

Alan.