How do I omit/prevent "" in tab delimited text

[Guest]

Sometimes when I export excel data to a tab delimited text file one or more
of the data fields is enclosed in quotation marks that did not exist in the
original file. How do I prevent this from happenning. (i.e. Name SSN,
will convert to "Name" SSN

 

[Bryan Hessey]

Quotes are generally found where the text item contains a special
character, in this case a comma (the field value seperator)

Avoid special characters and you should avoid the quotes.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Bryan. Unfortunately, when the data was originally formatted by
someone else (i.e., a dataset from another program) I have no control. Hmmm.
What to do?

 

[Guest]

Well Bryan, the light went on, and of course the solution was simple. After
exporting the data to a text file I was able to do a replace function (i.e.,
replace " with (blank). This did not affect my delimiter and I could not
import to my database (last name, first name) without a problem. Thanks for
your help, and I hope this note helps someone else. --Carlos Navarro

 

[mklapp]

That's your answer? Don't have data with punctuation?