How to use a comma in the text (not as separator) of a CSV

[RainerH]

Hello,

in a CSV with semicolon as separator for data merging I want to use a comma in the text like "John Doe, xyz" and not as a separator. When is create a csv like

name;date of birth
John Doe, xyz;15. September 2015

Publisher ignores the Komma and writes

Name: John Doe xyz
Birth: 15. September 2015

If I include all data in ".."

it doesn't worka at all:

"name";"date of birth"
"John Doe, xyz";"15. September 2015"

To not include the data of the first line in "..." like this

name;date of birth
"John Doe, xyz";"15. September 2015"

doesn't work too.

What am I doing wrong?

Thank you for your answers.

Rainer

[David in Яuislip]

String fields with commas must be enclosed within quotes.
LibreCalc does this automatically but there are many flavours of csv, it should look like this in a text editor

name,date of birth
"John Doe, xyz",15. September 2015
"Bill Smith, abc",29. November 1963

[Alfred]

11 minutes ago, David in Яuislip said:

String fields with commas must be enclosed within quotes.

I’m guessing that this shouldn’t apply if

sep=;

is specified at the top of the CSV file, but in any case the OP says

1 hour ago, RainerH said:

If I include all data in ".."

it doesn't worka at all:

"name";"date of birth"
"John Doe, xyz";"15. September 2015"

 

[David in Яuislip]

Affinity csv import doesn't allow sep=; at the top. I tried it earlier to test here but it assumes there's another record

name;date of birth
"John Doe, xyz";"15. September 2015"
should've worked, as it doesn't I would check the encoding, if it's not UTF-8 then convert it, if it is then I give up
Tsv might be an alternative but I've never got that to work

[walt.farrell]

In the Data Merge Manager you can specify the separator you want to use:

 

But using LibreOffice Calc, I have no problem generating a CSV file whose fields contain the "," character, and which uses the ";" as the separator. And as mentioned above, any fields that contain a "," are automatically quoted. And the file works properly for Data Merge.

Samples (using Publisher 2.5.0.2402, but should open in Publisher 2.4):

data-merge-test.afpub Untitled 2.csv

[RainerH]

walt.farrell, you are my hero of the day, no, of the week! How blind was I to miss the delimiter selection option?!?!?!?!?