You could write an simple program to read the data in from Excel via ODBC
and then save each field back to the MySQL database.  May not be the
simplest method, but it would be an interesting exercise.

dave

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Miller [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 8:05 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [uug] Import text file (tab or comma separated) into MySQL
database


When I switched to Mac OS X (from Windows) earlier this year, I saved 
all of my personal email in an Excel spreadsheet.  (It was a ridiculous 
process: I had to convert it from Outlook Express to Outlook to Access 
to Excel.)  In this huge spreadsheet, each line is a single email 
message, with columns for "To", "From", "Subject", "Body", etc.

I now want to get the email into a MySQL database using mysqlimport.  
Mysqlimport can import comma- or tab-separated files, which Excel can 
generate.  My problem arises because the body of each email has 
newlines after each paragraph (\r on Mac OS X), which is precisely the 
character that is used to separate records (messages).

Here's an example of what an Excel-generated, tab-separated file looks 
like: (It has the header and two records.)

To \t From \t Subject \t Body \r
[EMAIL PROTECTED] \t [EMAIL PROTECTED] \t Hello! \t Hi Richard, 
\r
How are you doing?] \r
I just wanted to let you know... \r
... \r
[EMAIL PROTECTED] \t [EMAIL PROTECTED] \t Thanks \t Mr. Miller, \r
Thanks for switching to Mac OS X earlier this year. \r
Sincerely, \r
Steve \r
.... \r

Because the message column has line breaks in it, when I import it into 
MySQL, the body only reads "Hi Richard," or "Mr. Miller," and excludes 
the rest of the message.

If I knew what the newline character was in Excel, I would replace it 
with some dummy character that I could expand later.  If not, it looks 
like once I export to a tab-separated file, it's too late to 
distinguish between newlines in the message body and newlines that end 
each record.

Any suggestions?

Richard Miller


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