csv format is incorrect

Question

Hey,

Whenever i save a spreadsheet as a CSV, it does not seem to save it in the correct format.

When i go to look at the file on another machine it seems to be saving it with the .csv extension however it shows as an xml icon. Where as a csv i've saved on a windows machine using office shows as a csv correctly.

I know theres something wrong because when uploading a csv to one of our many applications that use a csv import, it says it's incorrect. - my current solution is to get my colleague on a windows machine to re-save it for me as a csv again.

Can someone please advise if this is a bug or if there is a work around so i don't have to keep asking a windows user to save csv's for me.

Andy.

Answer 1

Some apps are finicky about CSV formats... Try using the specific listing for Windows Comma Separated (,csv) located in the Specialty Formats segment of the Format list in the Save As dialog.

Regards,

Bob J.

Answer 2

Unfortunatly the update to 14.1.2 hasn't fix the issue.

I'm still having to get either a windows office user to save me the file to csv, or an openoffice user to save the file as csv.

I've tried saving as

standard csv.

windows csv

dos csv

none of them seem to save it in the proper format, as i stated before when i open it up in text-edit it seems to display no different to any other csv, so all i can think its somewhere in the encoding.

any other ideas guys?

Answer 3

Hi J.e,

they seem to open in the same way in TextEdit (the one i saved and the one my colleague saved) but when i look on another mac thats running Open office, the one my colleague saved shows as a csv icon, but the one i saved via mac office 2011 shows as an xml docuemnt. Could it be something to do with the encoding maybe?

anyway i'll have to wait till next tuesday to see if it the update to mac office has done the trick.

Answer 4

Hi Bob,

yeah i did try that and for some things it worked, others it didn't.  I have updated to 14.1.2 to see if that fixes,

going to have to wait till next tuesday to test it as i'm up to date on all the csv uploads i need to do.

Answer 5

When you save as CSV, do you give the file a .csv extension? 

When you open a file you've saved as CSV with, say, TextEdit, what do you see? (it should be your values separated by commas, of course).

The icon displayed depends on whatever application has been designated on that machine as the default for opening files with that extension - it doesn't necessarily reflect the contents of the file.

I don't know of any bugs involving saving files as csv. Make sure you've applied the latest updates (XL is at 14.1.2).