Re: [libreoffice-users] Mixing LibreOffice Calc formats with ASCII text

2017-03-26 17:50 GMT+02:00 Doug McNutt <dougopt@macnauchtan.com>:

> Here are three lines copied from a LibreOffice Calc page
> 03/24/17    03/24/17        EPMT    p    $16.96    COMM Consumer Cellular
> 03/24/17    03/24/17        EPMT    p    $159.64    HOUS    Waste
> Management
> 03/24/17    03/29/17        EPMT    p    $330.65    COMM    Pair Networks
>
> The first two columns are dates formatted using numbers/Date/Format
> 01/01/04 Default to English (USA) Format code MM/DD/YY.  They are formatted
> that way for the entire length of possible columns. It's two columns to
> allow for sent and deposited dates.
>
> The third column is empty. The fourth column is a type of payment, here
> Electronic Payment. The fifth column is one letter, here Paid, the sixth
> column F is formatted as number-currency. the rest is two more comment
> columns formatted as text.
>
> I'm going to copy those three rows and install the contents right here:
> 03/24/17    03/24/17        EPMT    p    $16.96    COMM Consumer Cellular
> 03/24/17    03/24/17        EPMT    p    $159.64    HOUS    Waste
> Management
> 03/24/17    03/29/17        EPMT    p    $330.65    COMM    Pair Networks
>
> Now I'm going to copy the information from the Ubuntu text editor "gimp"


Do you mean Gedit? Gimp is not a text editor.


> and paste them back into the spreadsheet. I select the cell at the upper
> left just below where I started. I copy from the text editor and ask the
> spreadsheet to re-enter the data.
>
> I get an "Import" window.  It suggests separator options fixed width and
> tab. I don't understand the "fixed width". But it does show the data with
> little arrows separating the columns. If I copy from the "Text Import"
> window I get something that copies back in the text editor exactly as I
> would have expected. I will spare you seeing the same thing as above.
>
> I click the button that seems to be correct for closing the Import window.
> The spreadsheet seems to have placed the entire block data into the three
> cells in the A column. Selecting the three A cells and doing a copy and
> replace into the text editor I see this:
>
> "03/24/17    03/24/17        EPMT    p    $16.96    COMM Consumer
> Cellular"    (All in column A)
> "03/24/17    03/24/17        EPMT    p    $159.64    HOUS    Waste
> Management"
> "03/24/17    03/29/17        EPMT    p    $330.65    COMM    Pair Networks"
>
> I get the same result if I first select a columns A through H before I do
> the paste.

Are those spaces between each column or are they TAB (↹) characters?


> Note that the entire lines have been honored with quote marks. The $ signs
> are part of the text but it matters not much because it's in the wrong
> column anyway. Note that the spaces are still the tab characters that they
> have been all along.
>
> I have been trying a bunch of schemes that involve copying lines of data
> from a bank into cells over on the right side and then attempting to use
> formulas that move the data to the columns I need. I see one of those =
> signs in the front of the dates that just makes the date into text instead
> of the coded date it was. The $ sign gets left in the currency formatted
> column which declares it's just text and will fail to add with other data
> already present.
>
> Using a multiple step procedure involving the Value() function and
> removing the $ signs can be made to work but I have to move the data into
> the spreadsheet one column at a time. Perl5 can handle the modifications to
> remove the $ and = signs when the actual source is a bank but I still have
> to use =right(8) on the dates to persuade the spreadsheet to accept what it
> put out in the first place. The likes of 03/24/17 as text with nothing at
> the ends always gets something added that makes it into text. (Right now
> I'm safe from some bank offering 3/24/17 without the leading zero. But. . .)
>
> I'm pretty good with perl5. Does anybody have some experience in getting
> bank information into text that LibreOffice Calc will accept? It just takes
> too long to do everything one column at a time. Is the whole problem a bug
> in the spreadsheet code?


I actually use a macro to automatically copy my clipboard to the first free
row of a certain spreadsheet. I go to my bank's web page, hit Ctrl+a
Ctrl+c, then I hit a fat button in my spreadsheet and it puts everything at
the right place. But the information on my bank's page has TAB separators,
so it was very easy. In your case it seems like there are spaces.

However, I experimented a bit with your data. This is what I did, I don't
know if it's relevant in your case:

1. I copied your three lines from this message into the clipboard (select
the text → Ctrl+c).
2. I then opened a new, empty spreadsheet in LibreOffice Calc. Actually I
did it before step 1, but that shouldn't matter…
3. Now I right clicked a cell, A1 in this case, and clicked Paste Special
(or similar – I use the Swedish user interface, I didn't bother to switch
to English…)
4. I can now choose between ”Unformatted text” and ”HTML”. I chose the
first one, ”Unformatted text” and hit OK.
5. Now the Import dialogue pops up.
6. Since your date column are a bit odd here, I selected English (USA), I'm
not sure that's necessary, I think it is in my case but not in yours
(default date format here is the ISO-8601 ”YYYY-MM-DD”).
7. I select Space as separator and I also select ”Merge delimiters” and
”Detect special numbers” .
8. After I hit OK, all the data end up in their different rows and columns,
like expected.

One odd thing is that even though I selected English (USA) in atep 6, the
currency column was formatted as my local currency, not USD. I don't know
if that's a bug or if I did something wrong, but it's easy to correct. Just
pre-format those columns or format them afterwards.


Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg

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