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Opening csv files on Office X for Apple Powerbook

Essenchill
Posts: 1,032 Forumite


in Techie Stuff
I've tried to find some information on csv files, but failed miserably! I have a Apple PowerBook which is significantly out of date, running OS X 10.3.9 and running Microsoft Office X (Home/Student Ed).
I am trying to open csv files, which have been emailed to me.
The download has no icon attached; so doing a control/click to 'Open with..' I browse to the Office applications however Excel is greyed out and not an option... any ideas on this? I'm assuming it's that my system is out of date and I either need a newer OS or a newer version of Office.
I also wonder if the Home/Student Edition won't handle csv files?
Does anyone know?!
Thanks in advance.
I am trying to open csv files, which have been emailed to me.
The download has no icon attached; so doing a control/click to 'Open with..' I browse to the Office applications however Excel is greyed out and not an option... any ideas on this? I'm assuming it's that my system is out of date and I either need a newer OS or a newer version of Office.
I also wonder if the Home/Student Edition won't handle csv files?
Does anyone know?!
Thanks in advance.
0
Comments
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Have you saved the csv file on your hard disk?
If so, any text editor should be able to open it. Once saved, you should be able to Import the data to any spreadsheet or financial program.0 -
csv files are just text files (they are not native or proprietary Excel formats) so as googler says any text editor whould open them. You can then just copy and paste into Excel and use Data>TextToColumns to delimit the rows using a comma delimiter.0
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Thanks for these responses - yes, I have saved the files to the computer, and yes, I have managed to open the files in Word and indeed TextEdit, however I need to return the files in csv format via email...
Is there a reason which might explain why I can't launch them and edit them/save them as csv files?
TrickyDicky101 I am unsure on the sentence "to delimit the rows using a comma delimiter", would doing this and saving the file as a usual excel document create a saved file similar to a csv?0 -
What happens if you bypass the file associations and simply save the CSV file to disk, start Excel then try to open the file? Alternatively (and my memory isn't what it is for a system that old
) is there an import function for Office X? i.e. start a new spreadsheet then import the CSV.
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Essenchill wrote: »Is there a reason which might explain why I can't launch them and edit them/save them as csv files?
TrickyDicky101 I am unsure on the sentence "to delimit the rows using a comma delimiter", would doing this and saving the file as a usual excel document create a saved file similar to a csv?
I have no experience with Macs or with your Mac version of Excel I'm afraid.
If the csv files have been created in Windows, then one difference between these and csv files created on Macs would be the use of a Carriage Return-Line Feed combination to delimit the lines rather than just a Line Feed (as it is on Macs). I wouldn't have thought this would prevent the files from opening up in Excel though (but maybe it would?).
Excel doesn't handle UTF8 encoding of csv properly either, but again I wouldn't expect this to prevent you opening the file from within Excel (it might just make the output look wrong).
If you save down the file from within Excel, do you get a choice to save as csv in the SaveAs dialog?0 -
Thanks for both these ideas... BikerEd: Starting Excel and going to file... open once inside the program doesn't allow me to open the csv files; they are grayed out.
However, I have used another (PC) computer to open the csv files and save them as Excel documents so that I could at least open them in the spreadsheet format (text edit format is ok but I needed the columns preserving at the very least). In doing this, the file format of choice in Excel 07 was '.xlt' or template format. Saving them in this manner created the same issue on the Mac as with csv format - no option to open the file with my version of Excel. By starting Excel and choosing open from there, the xlt format documents are an option and will open... bizarre...
TrickyDicky101: Going to save the xlt document I can choose csv format, with the message '.csv may contain features that are not compatible with CSV (Comma delimited). Do you want to keep the workbook in this format? To keep this format, which leaves out any incompatible features, click Yes. To preserve the features, click No. The save a copy in the latest Excel format.' I've worked with csv files before, at work on PCs and I'm sure this message has always appeared when attempting to use this csv format. When I select Yes, the document saves, in csv format, and opens again without issue. Is this because the format is basically ignored and so the original csv files contain incompatible formatting?
Under the 'Data' menu there is an option for 'Import External Data...' and from there 'Import Text File', however again the original csv files are grayed out and not an option to 'Import'.
I'm not sure if the files were created in Windows or in OS X. They are versions of Windows documents which I am assured are Mac compatible.
I think the 'saving down as csv' option might be a solution here, but the message I get suggests the saved file won't be much different from a normal excel document as the formatting is probably going to be removed?0 -
Essenchill wrote: »They are versions of Windows documents which I am assured are Mac compatible.
Some workarounds here:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5806653_convert-csv-file-mac.html
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2212403poppy100 -
Many thanks for this, all very useful and helpful.0
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Finally, does anyone know if Office 2008 / 2011 for Mac has resolved this or if the problem(s) persists?0
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Essenchill wrote: »Finally, does anyone know if Office 2008 / 2011 for Mac has resolved this or if the problem(s) persists?
Office 2008 can definitely open CSV files - I do it all the time0
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