[sqr-users] .PRN file format problems for SQR inbound interface

[Yuri Lakef <lakef250@yahoo.com>]

Hello,
I'm having trouble getting a text file to format correctly from Excel to be 
processed by an SQR interface program.  I'm wanting to save the Excel worksheet 
as a .PRN file, which will have fixed-length columns.  The problem is that the 
worksheet has 23 columns and three of the fields have betwen 30-50 characters 
which causes some of the rows to exceed 240 bytes.
The MicroSoft support website revealed that, by design, Formatted Text (Space 
Delimited) (.PRN) files have a limit of 240 characters per line.  If several 
rows on the same worksheet contain text beyond 240 characters, the text begins 
wrapping at the row after the last row that contains data. 
If I save the Excel worksheet as a comma-delimted (.CSV) file type, then all 
data saves correctly.  The only problem I have is that fields which have 
embedded commas in the data will be surrounded by double-quotes in the text 
file.  This makes is very difficult to parse out each field on the row using 
the SQR interface program.  That's why I prefer using .PRN which has 
fixed-length columns. 
QUESTION:  Does anyone know if I can change the default delimiter in Excel from 
comma to tilde ('~') or something else?  That way when I save a worksheet as 
.CSV format, instead of separating each field in a row with a comma, the '~' 
(tilde) character will be used.  Then, using my interface program, I can parse 
each field on a row using this character, which will not be used within any 
data column.  Any other suggestions would be appreciated!
Thanks in advance for any help. 

 



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