I have an external source of data that I am importing into FMP7. I am
importing this data from a csv file. The problem is... there appears
to be return carriages in the text file that FMP is freaking out over
because it is treating the file as a CSV Import. Is there any way to
stop FMP from freaking out and creating multiple entries and messing up
the merge? OR... am I stuck fixing the return carriages in the CSV
file by hand every time???

bobchabot wrote on (11/4/2005):

CSV stands for Comma Separated Values. Everything on a single line is a
record, each comma delimiting the individual fields.

A CR tells FileMaker that it has reached the end of a line/record, and
that it needs to create a new record before proceeding.

FileMaker is not freaking out, it's doing what it's supposed to do. Any
database that imports CSV will do the same thing.

So, yes, you'll have to clean out the stray CRs before FM can do what you
want it to do.

Matt

Better still, see what you can do about getting cleaner source.

Whatever is generating your CSV is not doing such a great job of it if there are stray CRs all over the place.

Matt

Unfortunately, it's easier said than done. One notorious example is the Palm
Desktop software. Since the very first version they have insisted on
exporting the returns within fields like "address." I first wrote them about
this in 1996 but they never did anything about it. The ASCII 11 protocol
that FileMaker uses to represent returns within fields is not universally
employed.

However, bobchabot is not stuck to do it by hand every time. He can import
the entire text file into a single field. Then he can use an
algorithm/script to identify the returns which should be kept, vs. the ones
which should be removed/converted. That field can then be exported and
re-imported as records.

The exact code for this would depend on the contents/appearance of the
actual import file. Fortunately there are usually some patterns/markers in
such files which enable someone to perform this cleanup automatically.

Bill

"Matt Wills" <I'm (AT) Witz (DOT) end> wrote