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Odd characters in CSV output

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brsnyder117

09 Dec, 2013 08:46 PM

See attachments. Subtask ">" character shows up as junk characters in Excel. I'm on Mac, Snow Leopard.

Thanks -- Barbara

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1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Niko on 10 Dec, 2013 11:54 AM

   

   Hi Barbara,

   I have investigated this issue, the problem is that Excel for Mac doesn't properly decode CSV files in the UTF-8 character encoding format.
   If you choose "Import..." -> "CSV file" within Excel and then select "Unicode 6.1 UTF-8" for the file origin, the ">" will get replaced by "__". Also, if you select "Unicode 6.1", the full task name will be displayed without a delimiter.

   Alternatively you can open the exported CSV files with Apple Numbers or Open Office without problems.

   Thank you,

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2. 2 Posted by wasted on 24 Dec, 2013 08:40 AM

   

   Niko,

   I'm faced with the same problem, but your solution is not good enough. I'm French, so the name of my tasks contains accents sometimes. Messing up the ">" is kind of OK, but messing up with accents is not. Excel for Mac not supporting UTF8 properly is a pain, but you won't get Microsoft to fix it. Your app should enable the user to pick the encoding for the exported file, like other timetracking apps.

   Another tidbit : I seem to remember that the character ">" you picked, while a valid UTF8 character, is not present on default Windows fonts, which would cause an issue if one tried to move a file from their Mac to a Windows computer.

   Cheers,
   David

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3. Support Staff 3 Posted by Niko on 25 Dec, 2013 11:43 AM

   

   Hi David,

   thanks for pointing out these problems. I'll make sure to fix them in the upcoming version of Timelime. Letting the user pick the encoding is a good suggestion!

   Thanks again,
   Niko

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