MS compatible .csv or excel freeware for Windows 2012r2

[Warren]

I vaguely remember a year ago running into a problem as I was testing another automation program where there were two different types of .csv files (something about character set compatibility or similar), and that the default csv created by taking a Notepad document and changing to .csv was not ideal.

Not sure if that's the case with MS or not, but I've been crating .csv's with notepad, and it's very difficult to keep them human readable as well.

I would much prefer to use actual columns and so on like excel, but since I'm using bare bones server2012 edition, I don't have excel. I would also be easier if it essentially handled the ""around strings for fields that may contain commas for me automatically, though I suppose I could script that if necessary.

Is there such a freeware program that allows full visual experience of columns and rows, and outputs a .csv that is the most compatible type for MS? Google solution maybe? Does that output the correct type of csv?

I see, too, that there are a number of excel funcitons, so certainly open to that avenue instead if there is a good windows 2012 compatible freeware option there that provides MS compatible excel file output as opposed to .csv. Whatever works best.

[Warren]

Looked at several freeware or similar programs today for both csv and excel formats.

Not clear though if unicode csv is better for MS or not, or if it might be better for some reason to use the excel tools vs the csv tools in MS.

Anyone who has used both formats have a reason why I should go one way or another? If so, is there a preferred editor that will work with windows 2012?

[Marcus Tettmar]

Not sure if it helps but there's a free Excel viewer app, so if you just wanted to make it easier to view your CSV you could use that, and still create it in Notepad (or some other text editor).

How about OpenOffice which is free and compatible with MS Office, so would be good for CSV too?

There's also Google Docs, also free. In the cloud though, so not sure if that helps, but you can download the file locally.

As for whether or not you use Unicode that really depends on what kind of information you want stored in your CSV. If your data is ever likely to include "foreign" double-byte characters then you're going to need Unicode. Personally I'm not sure why you wouldn't use Unicode anyway - might as well be up to date.

[Warren]

OK, thx. I've been trying a few of them. Looking to see if one has column and row numbers built into reader too so I can easily check the field references visually.

Mainly, I just wanted to check to make sure MS doesn't require unicode compatibility or some other item I might not be aware of to work properly. The only reason even know what that is is that some other automation software I came across somewhere said it required unicode compatiible csv.

Also, since it looks like free editors exist for either csv or excel format, and the data files I create will exist for the sole purpose of reading/writing in MS, wondering if there's a particular reason why using one or the other format would be more useful in MS/.

[Warren]

I've tried out a number of them now, and the main question remaining is whether there is a particular benefit to using the XL functions instead of csv?

If I understand correctly, the xl functions start by actually opening xl, righ? So is this a non-starter anyway if using some other program (like openoffice) that mimics xl? Also, wouldn't that mean that using csv would be less resource intensive?

Really just reading and writing fields mainly.

[Marcus Tettmar]

If you just want to read from the CSV, then there's no real benefit to using the XL commands (unless you like doing it that way!)

If you need to add a line to the end of your CSV file, you still don't need XL because CSV is just plain text so you can append a line with WriteLn.

If you need to UPDATE a cell/row within the CSV then you're going to need Excel unless you are happy parsing and modifying the whole file and writing it all back out again.

So depends what you are doing. Just reading from the CSV then read in as a file with ReadFile or CSVFileToArray, or use DBQuery to query the CSV like a database table:

Reading From CSV Files:
https://www.mjtnet.com/blog/2009/03/12/ ... csv-files/
More on Reading and Writing CSV Files:
https://www.mjtnet.com/blog/2009/10/05/ ... csv-files/
Force DBQuery to Read CSV Columns as Text:
https://www.mjtnet.com/blog/2010/01/28/ ... s-as-text/

[Marcus Tettmar]

If you just want to read from the CSV, then there's no real benefit to using the XL commands (unless you like doing it that way!)

If you need to add a line to the end of your CSV file, you still don't need XL because CSV is just plain text so you can append a line with WriteLn.

If you need to UPDATE a cell/row within the CSV then you're going to need Excel unless you are happy parsing and modifying the whole file and writing it all back out again.

So depends what you are doing. Just reading from the CSV then read in as a file with ReadFile or CSVFileToArray, or use DBQuery to query the CSV like a database table:

Reading From CSV Files:
https://www.mjtnet.com/blog/2009/03/12/ ... csv-files/
More on Reading and Writing CSV Files:
https://www.mjtnet.com/blog/2009/10/05/ ... csv-files/
Force DBQuery to Read CSV Columns as Text:
https://www.mjtnet.com/blog/2010/01/28/ ... s-as-text/

[Warren]

Thx for the feedback. Just wanted to report back that I tried just about every option I could find (8 or 9, I think), and found OpenOffice calc to be by far the most useful in terms of customization for any particular purpose. Just in case anyone else is looking for similar solution. None of them did exactly what I wanted, but Calc had the most options, and the greatest ability to adapt to any given workflow.