exporting to Excel

In article
,
" " wrote:

> When I export Filemaker records into an Excel spreadsheet it happens
> sometimes that the spreadsheet shows blank records (empty rows). The
> spreadsheet will contain all Filemaker records in the correct
> sequence, but here and there I spot blank records in between otherwise
> perfect rows. I can not find that there would be anything unusual
> about Filemaker records, but surely there must be a reason why Excel
> inserts blank lines.
>
> Does anybody know or run into something similar?
>
> Thanks for any advice

Carriage returns in text fields will cause that.

--
Bill Collins
For email, change "fake" to "earthlink"
 >> Stay informed about: exporting to Excel 

"Bill" wrote in message

> In article
> ,
> " " wrote:
>
> > When I export Filemaker records into an Excel spreadsheet it happens
> > sometimes that the spreadsheet shows blank records (empty rows). The
> > spreadsheet will contain all Filemaker records in the correct
> > sequence, but here and there I spot blank records in between otherwise
> > perfect rows. I can not find that there would be anything unusual
> > about Filemaker records, but surely there must be a reason why Excel
> > inserts blank lines.
> >
> > Does anybody know or run into something similar?
> >
> > Thanks for any advice
>
> Carriage returns in text fields will cause that.

I'm not totally sure about "exporting to Excel", but FileMaker's export
options can't export a carriage return since that used to separate each
record. In all the export formats I deal with a carriage return within a
Text field is changed to a vertical tab, which doesn't even show up when
imported into Excel (depedning on the export format, Excel may display a
small "unknown character" symbol).

Having said that, I did try exporting to the WKS format that my version of
FileMaker has. When opened / imported back into FileMaker (creating a new
database), blank records did show up, so it could be a fault in FileMaker or
a fault in Excel. These blank records did not show up using other formats.

You're probably better to export to a normal Tab-delimited file and then
import that into Excel. If blank rows are still showing up then the two most
obvious options are:

- there are blank records being exported,
or - not all fields are being exported, and those that are contain no data
for those records.

Helpful Harry
 >> Stay informed about: exporting to Excel 

In article ,
"Your Name" wrote:

> "Bill" wrote in message
>
> > In article
> > ,
> > " " wrote:
> >
> > > When I export Filemaker records into an Excel spreadsheet it happens
> > > sometimes that the spreadsheet shows blank records (empty rows). The
> > > spreadsheet will contain all Filemaker records in the correct
> > > sequence, but here and there I spot blank records in between otherwise
> > > perfect rows. I can not find that there would be anything unusual
> > > about Filemaker records, but surely there must be a reason why Excel
> > > inserts blank lines.
> > >
> > > Does anybody know or run into something similar?
> > >
> > > Thanks for any advice
> >
> > Carriage returns in text fields will cause that.
>
> I'm not totally sure about "exporting to Excel", but FileMaker's export
> options can't export a carriage return since that used to separate each
> record. In all the export formats I deal with a carriage return within a
> Text field is changed to a vertical tab, which doesn't even show up when
> imported into Excel (depedning on the export format, Excel may display a
> small "unknown character" symbol).
>
> Having said that, I did try exporting to the WKS format that my version of
> FileMaker has. When opened / imported back into FileMaker (creating a new
> database), blank records did show up, so it could be a fault in FileMaker or
> a fault in Excel. These blank records did not show up using other formats.
>
> You're probably better to export to a normal Tab-delimited file and then
> import that into Excel. If blank rows are still showing up then the two most
> obvious options are:
>
> - there are blank records being exported,
> or - not all fields are being exported, and those that are contain no data
> for those records.
>
> Helpful Harry

As usual, Helpful Harry is right. I just ran a test Export to Excel
using Filemaker 9, and a carriage return in a text field did not produce
a new record in Excel, but rather a vertical tab.

--
Bill Collins
For email, change "fake" to "earthlink"
 >> Stay informed about: exporting to Excel