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MHardee

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Posts posted by MHardee

    Double quotes in the data

    in Issues, Questions, Etc.

    Posted

    Your file works for me as well. Looking at your data though, I can see that whatever application you exported it from added the double-quote text qualifiers by default. This actually furthers my suspicions that FP is seeing the quotes as text qualifiers rather than simply characters in the data if the quotes appear at the start of the string. For a CSV that's fine. For a tab delimited file I don't think that is desired behavior. I guess my only recourse at this point is to add an extra logic layer prior to FP composition to reformat fields containing double quotes.

     

    It also looks like the quotes that are inside the string got converted to a "fancy" quote of some sort as the character didn't transfer well from the Mac to the PC, but that's not really an issue.

    I believe that is the case as well... For kicks, start fresh, load the data new.. I have had it happen before when I instructed FP it was tab delimited and it was actually csv, it never really recovered.. So, open the data wizard, relocate the file, make sure you're selecting the proper format and be sure to check the "treat field values as tagged text" and see what's up..

     

    It could be the old "can't see the forest for the trees" syndrome..

     

    Mark

    Double quotes in the data

    in Issues, Questions, Etc.

    Posted

    Thanks for looking at it, but CSV is not an ideal format for my purposes. Since my data frequently contains commas, CSV would necessitate the use of a text qualifier, which is typically double quotes. I suspect that is what is happening here. Even though I'm using tab delimited and not CSV (which is really just comma delimited) FP is still seeing the double quotes as text qualifiers. That sort of defeats the purpose of using a tab delimited format.

     

    Though, just out of curiosity I tried a CSV file, but got the same results anyway.

     

    Don't get me wrong, I avoid .csv myself. It just seemed odd is that is what works in this (my) case. That's the dilemma to me.. It works on my system and not on yours.. I am attaching the data file I used for mine. Plug it into yours and let's see..

    quote test.txt

    Double quotes in the data

    in Issues, Questions, Etc.

    Posted

    No, the data has never been in Excel. Here is a screenshot of a test I just did. I typed this directly in Notepad, hitting tab between fields. I had to chop it up some to get in the file size limits, but it should all be visible.

     

    Did you see my screenshot? I worked fine.. I took a Filemaker file, exported as merge file (a csv file) placed it treating fields as formatted data and it works fine..

     

    Tab delimited and a quote as the first character are particularly evil.. Excel routinely sprinkles quotes and single quotes at the beginning of fields.

     

    That being said, did you get yours to work? If not, try .csv..

     

    Mark

    Double quotes in the data

    in Issues, Questions, Etc.

    Posted · Edited by MHardee
    New Info

    Thanks Mark. Unfortunately it is a bit sensitive still.

     

    I did do some experimenting though and found that if a field has a double quote in the middle, it is fine. It's only when the first character of the field is a double quote does it cause a problem.

     

    I have a date field in the data which is 

    5/7/2009

    If I put quotes around the middle 

    5/"7/"2009

    then that is exactly what displays. If instead I put quotes at the front 

    "5/"7/2009

    then all I get is the 5/.

     

    But, back to the original issue - has it been in excel? I was going to send back a small chunk that has not touched Excel to see if it makes a difference for you..

    Understand the data is sensitive.. Can you make a small (5 record) chunk and strip any sensitive info?

    Mark

     

    Update: I made a small file with quotes in the beginning, middle and end and exported as csv. If I can attach screenshot here, you should see it does work..

    Quotes.png.4a6b753b4daf110c08a3c46fba743052.png

    Double quotes in the data

    in Issues, Questions, Etc.

    Posted

    I'll see if I can attach a screenshot of what I'm talking about. This is a shot of the preview record selector, which I don't believe is impacted any particular formatting rules. In the tab delimited text file, that field has the full text the double quotes around the AAA but it is not being read for some reason.

     

    Any chance the data is originating from Excel (or has been in it?).. Excel whacks a whole lot of things..

     

    If the data is not sensitive, email it to me and I'll take a look..

     

    Mark

     

    M_Hardee1 at yahoo dot com...

    SlipSheets

    in Imposition

    Posted

    Hey everybody,

     

    First post in the new forum. I think I'm missing something that's probably easy and obvious about slipsheets.

     

    I have a 3x5.5 card that I'm imposing 10up on 12x18. I want to insert a slipsheet every 100 sheets. I've got all the imposition settings, chunks, etc. all working fine.

     

    My problem is the slipsheet itself. It inserts itself properly, but I only get a swatch of color in the top left corner that is 3x5.5. I created a body page that is 12x18 and put a box filled with color on it, but I don't get the entire 12x18 filled with color, just the top corner.

     

    I'm missing something obvious, right?

     

    It is never going to insert the single red page as an entire imposed page.. In order for this to somehow work, you'd have to insert 10 pages that will get imposed into a fake slipsheet.. Currently, it is fitting a 3x5 chunk of you page via the imposition..

     

    That's my story and I'm sticking to it...

     

    BTW, good the see another Mac head here..

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