Hi Leo, Thank you for the detailed response. Actually, I had been sending Arnold the type of file you recommend before I had to switch to Windows 8.1 and get a new version of Filemaker, which has the option of exporting directly to an Excel document, which is what Arnold uses to create the mailing labels. I can still go back to the old method and let him do the conversion again. Dell tells me he can use any type of file as long as it's alphabetized. I expect most people will wonder why I don't just use Excel in the first place. I can't stand looking at it, and I don't want to learn its miserable jargon. I got used to Filemaker when asked to use it to manage a NARGS database years ago and like it pretty well, although the new version is not as easy to use as the older one. No software designer ever heard the saying "If it's not broke, don't fix it." Best regards, Jane On 2/10/2016 6:46 PM, Leo Martin wrote: > 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 > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/ _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/