text export problem ... quotation marks

  • Thread starter Thread starter William DeLeo
  • Start date Start date
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William DeLeo

Hello all,

I am having a problem with exporting to a text file from Excel. I am
using "save as ... tab delimited text". One of the fields I need to
export looks like this:

"w.c.

But in the text file that is created, the result is:

"""w.c."

Does anyone know what I can put in the cell to get the result of:

"w.c.

in the exported text file? I don't care what it looks like in Excel
... I only care about the end result.

Thanks so much for your time.
 
William,

That's normal behavior, and the program reading the file may require the
doubled quote marks. If not, try using the Text Write Program at
www.tushar-mehta.com. Specify nothing for text qualifier. If you're using
commas for delimiters, and there are commas in your data, you're in trouble,
though.
 
I assumed it was "normal", but I don't really get what is happening ...
why the two sets of double quotes added before and the one extra set
added after??? The program I am using to read it reads the extra
quotes verbatim and that's what I need to get away from. There must be
a way within Excel to declare how to export that cell with the result
of "w.c. exactly.

But, I will check out that site and I do thank you very much for your
reply.
 
When a cell contains the delimiter, then excel will wrap that value with double
quotes. Then the next time Excel opens the file, it knows that that should be
one cell--not two.

When excel sees that double quote, it does the same thing.
"w.c<tab>"w.c

Should that be two cells?
w.c<tab> and w.c

But excel understands this ok:
"""w.c"<tab>"""w.c"
Consecutive double quotes are converted to one. The outside matching pair tells
excel when to stop for that cell.

But not all programs see the quote stuff the way excel does. (Well, at least
your program doesn't.) <<Excel does a nice job of formatting the data if you
reimport it to excel.>>

Earl's program gives you lots more control on how to handle your export.

Another option:
change those double quotes to a nice unique character that isn't used in your
worksheet--but not one that needs quotes!

I changed all " to $
Save as tab delimited and then used my favorite editor to mass change the $ to
". And saved that for input to the other program.
 
Excellent ... I'll mull all that over. I got Earl's file and I will
study the code. Thank you both so much!

BTW ... I have included the use of one of the add-in's I got from the
TM site (AutoChart Manager) in an SOP at my company. I will spread the
word about TM to my friends in the business.
 
Excellent ... I'll mull all that over. I got Earl's file and I will
study the code. Thank you both so much!

BTW ... I have included the use of one of the add-in's I got from the
TM site (AutoChart Manager) in an SOP at my company. I will spread the
word about TM to my friends in the business.
 
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