default for importing textfiles

[Florian Schalk]

Hi,
if we open a text file, the import assistance always wants to import as
'fixed width'.
Is it possible to change the default behaviour to 'delimited'?

I saw some threads that there is a regkey for the default Codepage, but for
delimited?

Regards
Florian

 

[hall.jeff]

Even if there is a way (and I'm not sure if there is or not) I would
advise against this unless you have absolute control over the incoming
file. There are a huge variety of fixed width. You have issues with
both the type of delimiter (csv vs. sdf, etc) but you also have issues
about how the escape characters are used. For example, Access, Excel
and IBM AS/400 all have a native CSV that they expect... However, they
all treat escape characters (" in general) differently. Honestly, I
would never use the import assistant anyways... just bring the file in
raw and use data->text to columns to do the conversion yourself...

 

[Florian Schalk]

Hello Jeff,

your recommended way is exactly what we did the last years.
Our ERP system creates a textfile and opens excel with the textfile as
parameter.
All data was in column A. Click on this column and use 'text to colums'
sorted it correct.
Our delimiter is the pipe sign.
But since a few month this doesn't work anymore. Maybe an Excel update is
the cause.
If we do exaclty the same (with the same data) the behavoiur of Excel is
different.
What I saw is, that the assistant has a default set to fixed width and I
asume that this is the cause.

Regards
Florian