Open Office trouble with csv files

[OnlineConnect]

Hi I am having trouble with open office saving file as csv, I end up with extra commars which corrupts the database. It works ok in excell but the machine I am using only has open office. Thanks for any advice

[srochford]

Can you post an example of what you mean? Are you getting extra commas at the end of each line or commas duplicated

eg
cat,dog,fish,snake,,,
or
cat,,dog,,fish,,snake

or something completely different?

[OnlineConnect]

Hello Srochford thanks for reply

eg
cat,dog,fish,snake,,,

Thats the problem exactly its inserting extra commars at the end of a line.

This seems to be where I have text in quotation marks

[srochford]

OK; often this is because the program thinks you have data in columns that are actually empty.

To confirm this, can you try highlighting just the data you want and copying and pasting it into a new sheet. Save that as CSV and see what you get.

the thing I've seen cause this before is if I've had stuff in (say) columns A-F and I then highlight columns E and F and press delete. This clears the content but leaves those 2 columns as part of the data set. When you export you get the extra commas because it hitnks that you want the empty cells (perfectly valid to have blank entries in lots of databases!)

[OnlineConnect]

OK will try that, thanks for your help