Help with PBS database

Leo Martin stnalpsoel@gmail.com
Wed, 10 Feb 2016 18:46:37 PST
Jane wrote

I have tried export to CSV (Word document) and it works well.
> I imagine I just then save the Word document as Excel. Or I can send it
> to Arnold...


The most likely to succeed solution is to export to CSV as plain ASCII
text, and not as a Word document. Just about every database, spreadsheet
and plain text editor program in the world, released in the last 20 years,
can read a plain text ASCII CSV file. Not that many will open a Word
document.

In the export dialog box, tell your program to separate fields with a tab,
and tell it to export to a plain text file with extension .CSV . If all
fields have only characters found on a standard US keyboard, select ASCII
encoded, plain text. If any of the fields has characters not found on a
standard US keyboard, for example, diacritics such as ñ , select some
variety of Unicode or UTF-8 encoding, and tell Arnold which you chose.
Just about every database, spreadsheet and plain text editor program in
the world, released in the last 5-10 years, can read any flavor of Unicode
or UTF-8 encoded plain text CSV.

Then send then send the CSV file to Arnold as an E-mail attachment, or via
a cloud file service such as Dropbox.

By exporting with a tab separating fields, it becomes incredibly easy to
import to a spreadsheet. This  can be done with the import commands. Or,
the recipient can open the CSV file with a plain text editor, such as
Windows Notepad or Mac Text, not with a word processor; highlight the
entire document; copy to clipboard; and, paste into a spreadsheet. All the
fields will paste in the proper rows and columns (if they were originally
in the proper positions.)

When importing to a database one merely tells the database to import the
CSV file and specifies tabs are the separators.

Leo Martin
Zone 9?
Phoenix Arizona USA
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