The easiest way to get what Excel wants to get, is creating example data in Excel and exporting it as a tab delimited file.
The problematic characters are line wraps, tabs and quotes inside a cell. The rules: - field delimiter is tab, record delimiter is CR LF (0x0d 0x0a) - Tabs inside cells are not allowed in tab delimited format. - line wraps in cells are encoded as LF (0x0a), the whole cell content is enclosed in double quotes (0x22) - double quotes in cell content are escaped with double double quotes and again the cell is wrapped in double quotes Example: "first line second line" abc tab do or don't "some text ""quoted""." Hex view: 0000000 22 66 69 72 73 74 20 6c 69 6e 65 0a 73 65 63 6f >"first line.seco< 0000020 6e 64 20 6c 69 6e 65 22 09 61 62 63 20 74 61 62 >nd line".abc tab< 0000040 0d 0a 64 6f 20 6f 72 20 64 6f 6e 27 74 09 22 73 >..do or don't."s< 0000060 6f 6d 65 20 74 65 78 74 20 22 22 71 75 6f 74 65 >ome text ""quote< 0000100 64 22 22 2e 22 0d 0a >d""."..< HTH Regards Lutz > -----Original Message----- > From: 4D_Tech [mailto:4d_tech-boun...@lists.4d.com] On Behalf Of Tim Nevels > via > 4D_Tech > Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2017 8:39 PM > To: 4d_tech@lists.4d.com > Cc: Tim Nevels <timnev...@mac.com> > Subject: Re: tab seperated text - what to use for Cr > > On Mar 15, 2017, at 2:00 PM,Chip Scheide wrote: > > > I am trying to export some data to tab separated format. > > it is possible that there are carriage returns in the data. > > Is there a character (or combination) that I can use to replace the > > return to get excel to automatically wrap the text into one cell? > > “Space" will work and had no cross-platform macOS/Windows Excel issues. I do > this > whenever > > You might also try option-space if you are on macOS. That used to represent a > “hard > space” that some Mac software would recognize and treat like a “soft return”. > You > would have to do some testing to verify how current versions of Excel handle > this and > how it is handled on Windows. > > On Windows Excel will handle alt-Enter as a special line break character. But > I believe > this is just a LF — line feed, char(10) — character so it may be problematic > since end > of record delimiters are typically CR+LF. > > Tim > > ******************************************** > Tim Nevels > Innovative Solutions > 785-749-3444 > timnev...@mac.com<mailto:timnev...@mac.com> > ******************************************** > > ********************************************************************* > * > 4D Internet Users Group (4D iNUG) > FAQ: http://lists.4d.com/faqnug.html > Archive: http://lists.4d.com/archives.html > Options: http://lists.4d.com/mailman/options/4d_tech > Unsub: mailto:4d_tech-unsubscr...@lists.4d.com > ********************************************************************* > * ********************************************************************** 4D Internet Users Group (4D iNUG) FAQ: http://lists.4d.com/faqnug.html Archive: http://lists.4d.com/archives.html Options: http://lists.4d.com/mailman/options/4d_tech Unsub: mailto:4d_tech-unsubscr...@lists.4d.com **********************************************************************
