Easy Populate and Excel data handling

[jackryan]

Hi, I hope you can shed some light on an excel tab delimited issue i am having.

When editing the sample tab-delimited product txt file that EP create, i would use excel to enter product descriptions with multi lines using soft return (alt enter ).
eg.
Feature a:
Feature b:
Feature c:
(within the excel cell, i would use alt enter between each line so the 3 feature lines are all in one cell)

I would then save file as tab delimited.
However as i open file again in excel as tab delimited file, excel has split each line into its own cell.

As a result, i cannot import this data into Easy Populate due to corrupted data.

How can i make excel save all 3 lines within a cell as one cell and not 3 cells?

And also, excel would insert " after cell featuring oz, eg weight: 0.7 oz". Don't know why it does that.

Any help will be appreciated.

tks, Mac

[fairestcape]

Remember that a tab-delimited TXT file is NOT a spreadsheet! You lose Excel formatting when saving as a TXT file.

If you want line breaks (and other formatting) in your product description text, then you must use HTML tags...

eg:

Our biscuits are the <b>finest</b> in the world.<br /><br />We make them using the finest ingredients.<br /><br />Here, we feature the chocolate creams and they come in the following sizes:<ul><li>Small</li><li>medium</li><li>large</li></ul>

Will render as:

Our biscuits are the finest in the world.

We make them using the finest ingredients.

Here, we feature the chocolate creams and they come in the following sizes:

• Small
• medium
• large

[fairestcape]

There is a WIKI tutorial on Easy Populate. Go to the WIKI and search for Easy Populate (2 words)

[jackryan]

Many thanks for the reply.

I currently have 300 products to import into database, each product has about 5 lines of descriptions. I was hoping i would not need to manual remove the line breaks from each line and add the <br /><br />.

Is there a way i can automate this or minimise my time in repairing this data?

Can i perhaps use the substitute command in excel to replace the line breaks with <br /><br />? If so, how would i do this?

many thanks again.

[jackryan]

Hi Crazycucumber & Fairestcape, i managed to find a solution that may help others too.

Removing line break from Excel
In Excel, choose Edit>Replace
Click in the Find What box
Hold the Alt key, and (on the number keypad), type 0010
This represents a line break in Excel.
You won't see anything in the 'Find What' box

In the Replace with box, type the characters that you want to use
instead of a line break eg .<br />

Click the Replace All button

This worked a treat. Many thanks.

[fairestcape]

Yes... using search & replace in excel (or OpenOffice) is the quickest way of changing a feature...

... as you point out, a knowledge of the procedure is what counts!

eg: (I have used CONCATENATE in Excel when I've had to put the product weight into the description text).

[crazycucumber]

The description in Zen will take HTML , im not sure the alt enter thing will work for zen anyway. simple put in a </BR> tag where you want the line break. if your filling in the weight field , this should be just a decimal number.


EDIT : argh Too SLow ! and better layout above