18904
Reporter: feedback bot
Type: Feedback
Summary: CSV not formatting properly to excel spreadsheet
Resolution: Done
Status: Closed
Created: 2017-01-18 20:35:39.077
Updated: 2017-01-19 08:55:01.273
Resolved: 2017-01-18 20:52:01.617
Description: Hello - I am trying to download the data from celtis tenuifolia locations, and open them in an excel spreadsheet but the data is completely jumbled and non-readable. I have had no problem opening csv formatted data sheets in excel from other websites. Is there a possible solution? I tried the Darwine Core Format as well but no luck.
Thanks
Download details
IdentifierDOIdoi:10.15468/dl.xpirbr Cite asGBIF.org (18th January 2017) GBIF Occurrence Download http://doi.org/10.15468/dl.xpirbr Query
Taxon
Celtis tenuifolia Nutt.
FormatCSVStatusPreparingquery latest data ]]>
Author: trobertson@gbif.org
Created: 2017-01-18 20:51:27.421
Updated: 2017-01-18 20:51:27.421
The CSV download is actually a tab delimited file.
If you open it in Excel, you can select the first column, use the "Data" menu and then select "Text to columns" and follow the instructions to select the tab delimiter.
I hope this helps.
Author: trobertson@gbif.org
Comment: We need to consider how to better manage this as it stumps too many people it seems.
Created: 2017-01-18 20:52:01.64
Updated: 2017-01-18 20:52:01.64
Author: mblissett
Created: 2017-01-18 21:38:27.921
Updated: 2017-01-18 21:38:27.921
Perhaps we should name the file .tsv? Although the Microsoft site looks like they prefer .txt for some reason: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Import-or-export-text-txt-or-csv-files-5250ac4c-663c-47ce-937b-339e391393ba
Or we could offer downloads in ODS / OpenDocument Spreadsheet format, which isn't too ugly -- XML in a Zipfile -- and is a bit more respectable for archival than Microsoft's own formats: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/wa-odf/#list7 (Excel is happy to open these.)
Author: trobertson@gbif.org
Created: 2017-01-18 22:37:16.395
Updated: 2017-01-18 22:37:16.395
yeah. We deliberately did not do that before as tools like Google sheets, fusion tables etc would only let you upload a .csv named file at the time. That is no longer the case.
Author: cgendreau
Comment: Changing the extension is a relatively easy fix that will at least prevent Excel to open the file automatically (at least on my machine).
Created: 2017-01-19 08:55:01.273
Updated: 2017-01-19 08:55:01.273