Export CSV with other delimiter

[Kristian_Ravn]

Hi,

I have a database with a lot of books in it, along things like Imprint and Author there is also a lot of text explaining what the book is about. When I export it, the text gets all messed up, because there is a lot of commas in the text-column that has nothing to do with the delimiter.

If i could export with other delimiters this shouldn’t be an issue. If I could wrap all cell content in quotes, this shouldn’t be a problem. But right now it is.

Does anyone know a workaround?

Thanks,

[sophie_saint-ma]

Hello, I have the exact same problem for another use : I copy/paste extracts of minutes of the meetings of my booksellers association in a cell for each subject. That allows my members to get a ready to use updated overview on every subject they work on. Very usefull but infortunately as you say, the text is all messed up when they downloaded on csv to work about : any written text use coma obviously. Would it be possible to choose the delimiter we need when we export ? Usually you get to choose between comma, semicolon and vertical bar. Thank you.

[Anca_Luca]

As of today, Airtable is handling commas in exported CSV files, ensuring it follows the rules of the CSV files usage of comma inside a field (albeit with a little bug).
However, that little bug won’t break the CSV itself.

Of course, it also depends on the software that you’re using to read this CSV, which may be doing it in a naive way and thus breaking on the first comma that is inside a field. If this is the case, you can re-save the CSV exported by Airtable with a different software by passing it through a spreadsheet software (LibreOffice Calc for example would do the job).