Q: Use Tab or Comma as delimiters A: We recommend comma, quote delimited over TAB delimited based on our testing with OAK!Merge 9 Several files that were tab delimited were not importable, but when opened in excel and saved as CSV (comma delimited) they did work. Some TAB delimited fields worked OK. We have also been able to get some CSVs from excel that would not import, to properly import by opening in ACCESS and exporting from ACCESS as a CSV, setting the field delimiter to a double quote. Alan Lee www.oakpro.com
Q: Why do your samples in OAK!Merge sample folder all have a column with ‘End’ filled in? A: Is has become a “best practice” to fill in a dummy field as the last field of a CSV file with data. Just ignore it when mapping your import source data. It is not required, just a good practice. This is due to errors with importing records with different numbers of fields. Ensuring a value is always in the last column helped avoid this problem. Also, if you see the “end” field in your data after an import, it helps trouble shoot the import file. It may have extra or be missing field delimiters like double quotes. We recommend you add a dummy field to the end of each import file structure or ensure the last data field has data for all records as a best practice. The reasoning is… Older versions of Excel would not output extra comas on rows with no data in the last few fields, so each… read more →