Paul,
I asked on the OpenOffice.org Discuss list. These are the answers I got:
> How to Import a pipe delimited text file into an openoffice.org
> spreadsheet?
>
> Paul
This is a common scenario if you are dealing with output from a 'nix
database (Ingres, MySQL both come to mind). When you do an sql dump you
many times get a text-based, tabular output:
| some data | some more data | yet some more |
In Excel, I've used text file import and select "other" for the seperator
and enter the pipe "|" character. I imagine OOo has similar
functionality?
Stew B
At a guess it means the file is structured like
column1|column2|column3
moreC1|MoreC2|MoreC3
to do this open calc
file --> open
select type text csv ( its towards the bottom )
select the file and click on OK
in the text import box
tick seperator other and put | in the box next to it
Thats all there is to it
- Justin
In a comma-delimited file (a.k.a comma-separated-values, or *.csv in the MS
world), data fileds are delimited/separated by commas <,>.
There are also Tab-delimited values (separated by TAB characters.
My guess is that pipe-delimited files have fields delimited by "the
character normally used to pipe stuff around *nix systems", i.e <|>.
John H
From the Help section in OOo641c:
OpenOffice.org normally automatically recognizes the correct file type when a file is
opened. In some cases, you may need to select the file type in the Open dialog. For
example, say you have a database table in text format that you want to open as a
database table. In this case you would not only select the file but also specify the
file type "Text - txt -csv (OpenOffice.org Calc)". The
("vnd.sun.star.help://scalc/65608?Language=en-US&System=WIN" ) dialog will open. For
example, you can select the US English option so that the contents are interpreted as
US English formatted numbers irrespective of the system language. The Englisch names
of the months will be recognized automatically.
With a Calc sheet open, press F1, under the Index tab, enter "Importing a database
table as text". that shows info on how to import using various delimiters.
I wasn't really sure about the | character. Delimited with |'s instead of ,'s ?
I've opened *.csv files in OOo directly from the OpenFile dialog.
Hope this helps,
regards,
Richard Holt.
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