Importing CSV file into Calc with records determined by the number of field separators instead of Line Feeds

users
#1

People,

I need to import a CSV dump from an Android SMS Sqlite DB - the problem is, many of the SMSs have line breaks in the text body of the DB record and this messes up the import into Calc. There does not seem to be any way of saying to Calc: "Count x fields for each record" instead of recognising a record by a LF . .

Can anyone think of a nice, easy fix for this problem?

Thanks,

Phil.

#2

You should be able to connect a Base document to the SQLite DB. Then
your spreadsheet can access the database directly.

CSV is not a file format. It is mere convention. If you have multi-line
filds, you've got to export with text delimiters (in most cases quotes).
Everything between a pair of text delimiters can be treated as one text
value.

#3

Are you using linux?

#4

This is more specific.

I assume you have text delimited by double quotes.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26406281/replace-new-line-character-between-double-quotes-with-space

#5

Another useful tool for this type of clean-up is SED. It can take some
trial & error and web searching if you're not familiar with sed or awk ....
but it's good knowledge to have.