Forum Discussion
Importing Text Files: Tab-deliminated text files vs CSV's
The only difference is that tab is always tab, for "comma separated" separator could be not only comma but semicolon and in general, any other symbol. Default one depends on regional setting of your Windows, but in general could be changed on any other one. However, with that it could be side effect for other apps / files within your system.
Another way it to add as first line of csv file
sep=,
if comma is used by separator or
sep=;
if semicolon, etc.
For example, if click on such csv file
and such one
Excel opens it exactly the same way
Another point is that Excel could do some default transformation if you open csv file by double click. For example, 11-05 could be converted to November 05 of current year. Again, depends on regional settings. In such cases Import is more preferable since you may define columns type during the import. But will it be tab-delimited or comma-delimited - doesn't matter, they are imported by exactly same way.
The only difference is that tab is always tab, for "comma separated" separator could be not only comma but semicolon and in general, any other symbol. Default one depends on regional setting of your Windows, but in general could be changed on any other one. However, with that it could be side effect for other apps / files within your system.
Another way it to add as first line of csv file
sep=,
if comma is used by separator or
sep=;
if semicolon, etc.
For example, if click on such csv file
and such one
Excel opens it exactly the same way
Another point is that Excel could do some default transformation if you open csv file by double click. For example, 11-05 could be converted to November 05 of current year. Again, depends on regional settings. In such cases Import is more preferable since you may define columns type during the import. But will it be tab-delimited or comma-delimited - doesn't matter, they are imported by exactly same way.
- Thanks for this explanation,
I hope our company's computer regional settings are all the same, but I'll keep that in mind when the outputs might be dates or other ambiguous formats.
