Excel 2008 for mac question

Hello,
I'm in the process of moving from a PC to an iMac. I upload an Excel file to my shopping cart in tab delimited format. Worked fine on the PC. On the mac it's not putting an end of line character in the tab delim. file. Comes across as one long line instead of almost 2000 lines. Anyone know how to get the CR or what ever other symbol is needed at the end of each line?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Upload an Excel file to your shopping cart? Sounds like you're buying it. Are you saying that you're trying to open an Excel file from Windows on your Mac using Excel from Office 2008? And the file was saved as tab delimited?

Tab delimited format displays like plain text. There's no guaranty of compatibility when saving that way. As a matter of fact, delimited format is generally used when there is no compatibility between programs. Which is one reason many banks use it as a download option for their users to fill in accounts. Is there any reason it can't be saved as a normal Excel file?

Regards.

No, it's my shopping cart and the database file I'm trying to upload contains all the products on my site. The cart uses it as my product database. It has to be uploaded in some kind of delimited format. It can be tab, or , or | but not as an Excel file. My Windows Excel sent it correctly. When I saved it as a tab delimited file on the mac I got the problem Got the same problem when I tried a , delimited file. Looked back at the save form and didn't see any variables that could be changed.

OK, I understand what you're trying to do, but the answer is going to be the same. It's a common problem with CSV and delimited files especially when moving them between operating systems. Best I can suggest is to experiment with the file format to see if it will you can get it to save correctly on your Mac. Otherwise you might be stuck with manually placing the EOL marker at the end of each line in order to break it down to the right format.

Regards.

OK. It would be easy to add the EOL marker at the end of each line in my file. But I have a dumb question...what is the EOL marker?

Thanks!

EOL is what's known as a carriage return. You've got a lot of work ahead of you if that file is actually a 2000 line data base. Hitting return that many times is no fun. You need to find a better way of uploading that file to the shopping cart. How about MS Office 2008 for the Mac? Do you have a copy? If not, you can try the free Open Office for the Mac. File compatible with MS Office for Win and Mac.

Regards.

Yes, I have MS Office 2008 for the mac. That's the Excel program that I keep the file in, saving as a tab delimited before uploading. If it would see the CR I could enter it in my last column. It's just a letter N so N{CR} would not be hard to copy/past down the line. If it would go into the tab delimited file OK.

Thanks for your help. I appreciate it!

I tried putting a command return after the N in the last column. Didn't work. I'm new to the mac...I'm assuming (that can get me into trouble) that command return would be the same as control return in windows.

Problem solved! Excel for mac Office 2008 doesn't save as a tab delimited file well. Saved file as "Windows formatted text file". Worked fine then.

Thanks for all the help!

Thanks for posting back. We both learned something... ;D

Regards.