Why OO Calc sucks today [modified]
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Taking my cue from Dan Neely's posts: I needed to load a tab delimited text file into Calc today because our version of Excel (2003) doesn't support columns beyond 256 (which is also why Excel 2003 sucks today, and our IT group sucks for not upgrading us and why Microsoft sucks for not giving us more columns until Excel 2007). First Calc doesn't recognize tab delimited straight off the bat (not surprising) and asks you to pick a filter. There is no tab delimited filter, but it turns out you can use the csv (comma delimited) filter and it pops up a dialog so you can pick what the delimiter actually is (and it notices straight away that it's tab, which is good, so you just click ok). I might not have noticed this if I hadn't just opened a csv file in Calc, so I kind of got lucky there. Then I mess about doing some cutting and pasting to get the file the way I need it and save it. Now comes the sucky part, I load the file into the program that actually uses the file and....it doesn't work. I open the file in a text editor and find that Calc has helpfully put double quotes around all the text fields in the file. Thanks Calc, you just screwed up my file. Quick search and replace to remove the offending double quotes fixed the problem.
modified on Tuesday, August 4, 2009 12:31 PM
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Taking my cue from Dan Neely's posts: I needed to load a tab delimited text file into Calc today because our version of Excel (2003) doesn't support columns beyond 256 (which is also why Excel 2003 sucks today, and our IT group sucks for not upgrading us and why Microsoft sucks for not giving us more columns until Excel 2007). First Calc doesn't recognize tab delimited straight off the bat (not surprising) and asks you to pick a filter. There is no tab delimited filter, but it turns out you can use the csv (comma delimited) filter and it pops up a dialog so you can pick what the delimiter actually is (and it notices straight away that it's tab, which is good, so you just click ok). I might not have noticed this if I hadn't just opened a csv file in Calc, so I kind of got lucky there. Then I mess about doing some cutting and pasting to get the file the way I need it and save it. Now comes the sucky part, I load the file into the program that actually uses the file and....it doesn't work. I open the file in a text editor and find that Calc has helpfully put double quotes around all the text fields in the file. Thanks Calc, you just screwed up my file. Quick search and replace to remove the offending double quotes fixed the problem.
modified on Tuesday, August 4, 2009 12:31 PM
Excel will put double quotes over some fields, but only if they contain certain characters (such as a double quote) and I think some other cases, though I forget now what they are. The first time I saw it, it took a bit to figure out what was going on. At least Calc is being consistent and doing it to all fields. The first time I used Calc I needed to do the same thing - read a tab delimited file. Ii took forever for me to figure out how to do it. Why the hell is it buried inside of the csv filter? I really hate Calc for a lot of the odd, non-standard things it does, but I use it at home 'cause I'm too cheap to spring for Excel. I'm really getting close to the point where the frustration isn't worth it any more though. You get what you pay for sometimes.
----- In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.
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Excel will put double quotes over some fields, but only if they contain certain characters (such as a double quote) and I think some other cases, though I forget now what they are. The first time I saw it, it took a bit to figure out what was going on. At least Calc is being consistent and doing it to all fields. The first time I used Calc I needed to do the same thing - read a tab delimited file. Ii took forever for me to figure out how to do it. Why the hell is it buried inside of the csv filter? I really hate Calc for a lot of the odd, non-standard things it does, but I use it at home 'cause I'm too cheap to spring for Excel. I'm really getting close to the point where the frustration isn't worth it any more though. You get what you pay for sometimes.
----- In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.
Vineas wrote:
The first time I used Calc I needed to do the same thing - read a tab delimited file. Ii took forever for me to figure out how to do it. Why the hell is it buried inside of the csv filter?
I feel you pain. Like I said, if I hadn't just (literally 5 minutes before) loaded a csv file into Calc, it never would have occurred to try the csv filter for a tab delimited file. If I'd decided to load those two files the other way around, I'd probably still be cursing at it and stuck on the first file. Also, cutting and pasting from Excel into Calc - not good.