How to open a CSV file in OS 10.4?

[alexf]

I need to open a CSV file in OS 10.4 and cannot find an application which will display the data in a legible format. CSV is now one of (or perhaps THE) most common database formats out there, so I am not sure why this is so difficult.

Any suggestions?

 

[jeremy.king]

By what do you mean legible?

TextEdit or TextWrangler will open it fine.

Microsoft Excel will open it as a spreadsheet.

What are you looking to do with it?

 

[Doctor Q]

You can probably open it in AppleWorks too.

 

[alexf]

By what do you mean legible?

TextEdit or TextWrangler will open it fine.

Microsoft Excel will open it as a spreadsheet.

What are you looking to do with it?

Well, I work as a Web designer / developer and I am maintaining a store for a client. We have a major product update, and they sent me all the new data as a CSV file. This would be fine if we were using a database, but we are not; I am doing everything by hand. I need to see each product and associated info (price, number, etc.) separated by line breaks, not commas.

Thanks for the help.

 

[tobefirst ⚽️]

So, you're saying you need a Comma Separated Values file to not separate by commas?

 

[tobefirst ⚽️]

I thought about this for a minute....

Would it work to take the CSV file, open it up even though it has all the commas, and just do a "Find and Replace" with returns in place of commas? Would that solve the problem?

 

[alexf]

I thought about this for a minute....

Would it work to take the CSV file, open it up even though it has all the commas, and just do a "Find and Replace" with returns in place of commas? Would that solve the problem?

This is a good idea; I thought about this myself. I'll give it a try.

Ideally, I think I will need to have the client get me the data in some other format than CSV (e.g. Excel). If I am not mistaken, CSV is really meant to be plugged into a database, right?

 

[mkrishnan]

Ideally, I think I will need to have the client get me the data in some other format than CSV (e.g. Excel). If I am not mistaken, CSV is really meant to be plugged into a database, right?

Wait... if you're comfortable with an excel file, why don't you open the CSV in Excel? Excel will handle this format very easily. I think CSVs are commonly used to interchange information both in databasing and spreadsheeting... usually they work for sort of two-dimensional records. So it isn't really a "database" format, at least not in the relational or object-oriented database sense.

 

[alexf]

Wait... if you're comfortable with an excel file, why don't you open the CSV in Excel? Excel will handle this format very easily. I think CSVs are commonly used to interchange information both in databasing and spreadsheeting... usually they work for sort of two-dimensional records. So it isn't really a "database" format, at least not in the relational or object-oriented database sense.

No, Excel will not open the file...

 

[Doctor Q]

No, Excel will not open the file...

Then it isn't a csv file like any I've run into it.

I thought your problem might have been with the line endings in the file, so I created a test csv file and tried changing the line endings to Unix style, Macintosh style, and PC style. Excel 2004 had no trouble with any of them.

Instead of dragging it into Excel, try this: launch Excel, select File->Open, set "Enable" to "All Documents" (not just "All Readable Documents"), navigate to your csv file, and select it. Does it open? Is it parsed into separate columns?

 

[CanadaRAM]

.CSV files

Excel - File: Open -- issue is that Excel will truncate long fields to 255 characters and will evaluate some text fields as numerals or calculations, possible example would be a phone number.

Filemaker Pro - File: Open (creates a new DB) or File: Import into an existing DB

BBEdit - File: Open. Yes you can search and replace, but be WERRY CAREFUL not to accidentally remove even one comma or paragraph mark, because the wheels will fall off...

 

[Alfonso G]

I need to open a CSV file in OS 10.4 and cannot find an application which will display the data in a legible format. CSV is now one of (or perhaps THE) most common database formats out there, so I am not sure why this is so difficult.

Any suggestions?

It's actually very easy. It has nothing to do with MAC, but with not knowing enough about Excel:

You go to Excel. And select "Import". It will allow you to properly open the CSV file separating the information in different columns.

Easy peasy!

 

[Mr_Brightside_@]

This thread was created 10.5 years ago, and likely software options were different for the OP then.