Program for CSV files

I usually use NeoOffice since it is FREE and can easily be downloaded.

The only thing I have noticed is that it seems to default to showing Long/Lat coordinates to only two decimal places. When you click on one to edit, you can see all the digits are really there. But if you Save As... a CSV file, it outputs whatever the display setting is, so it will output only two decimal places if you don't change it.

So as a matter of habit, if I load in a CSV file, first thing I do is highlight the first two columns and change the display to show out to 6 decimal places. Then my outputted CSV files have all the digits. I learned the hard way that it will strip them off if you don't.

PT

That sounds like a pretty serious bug to me. Doing a "save as" should not change the data in the cells, regardless of how the formatting is set for viewing.

If you have an Intel Mac you should check out:
http://www.openoffice.org/index.html

I use Numbers on my iMac and it works great.

NeoOffice *IS* OpenOffice. NeoOffice is just a Mac port of Open Office so that you don't need to run the X11 system as you do with Open Office.

I wonder if the "bug" is a Neo only thing or if it is in Open Office as well?

PT

I was testing that as you were posting. By the time I got back to report, you had already beat me to the punch. I works identically. It still makes no sense to me and I'll now go to my PC and see if Excel does the same thing.

Edit: Scary, but it appears it is the nature of saving to csv. It's the same even within Excel when saving as csv. Obviously, this doesn't happen when saving to the native xls type -- there, viewing format is just that, and it preserves the full data in the cell.

Thank you for educating me on that point. It was only a matter of pure luck that any test file I created was formatted to see all the decimal places, and only a matter of time before I would have been pulling my hair out. I wonder if this is documented in lots of places on the site and I just didn't absorb it.

I use NeoOffice for most of my translation files such as doc and pps. I make doc files for Windows people with it also.

If you think there is a bug in Neo, send in a report. A while ago Neo choked on a pps file. I wrote a report and with an exchange of e-mails during the weekend they fixed it and put out a new patch. A Tiger upgrade changed something.

Another reason I use Tables is I can transfer my AW spreadsheets over easily. I had never thought to use Neo to make xls files from my AW ones. I will have to see how well it works.

Learn something new every day. H.

I sometimes feel I can learn the SAME thing as new every couple days. It's easier that way, you don't have to work as hard at finding truly new stuff.

No, he's saying that Save As saves it as it is shown on the screen. The default screen view is for only 2 decimal positions, even though the data has 6 decimal positions. For what it's worth, Microsoft Excel does the same thing under the right circumstances. And if you save the file while the display setting is for 2 decimals, it will strip out what you have told it not to display. Excel also does not have a default setting for #places after the decimal. You can easily change that, but there is not a program setting to make that the default value.

I realize that now. That is why, after testing Excel, I said above:

Odd thing is I noticed when I opened up CSV files from work on the PC, my Excel opens them showing the full number of digits and doesn't default to a limit like NeoOffice does. Interesting to note though, that if one were to limit the number of decimal placed displayed that Excel also outputs CSV files to whatever the display is rather then the underlying data.

As I said, I discovered this the hard way when I edited some POI files I had downloaded from here only to discover my outputted files had truncated coordinates and I had to start over. I now make it a practice to save my edits as real spreadsheets separately then output a CSV version. Later to make additional edits, I go back to the spreadsheet file.

I am just glad I noticed this after only having spent time on a couple files rather than weeks on MANY files.

PT

That is even worse; I was assuming it was only a problem with new files. However, I've just discovered the solution. There is a global default setting under Tools/Options/NeoOffice Calc/Calculate for the decimal places displayed. I just changed it from 2 to 8, and existing files now open with whatever digits were originally input.

Like I said, it was pure luck that I hadn't made a mess of things up 'til now. Thanks for the heads-up.

Ya, what happened was I would open a downloaded CSV file and then when I went to do an edit, that is when I noticed it was only two decimal placed displayed. But when I clicked on it, in the edit field, I see that really all, for example, 6 digits after the decimal where shown so I chalked it up to just a display setting. Like you, I *assumed* when I outputted a new CSV file, it would output ALL the digits regardless of display setting. Well it wasn't until the NEXT time I went to edit that CSV file that I discovered I all my coordinates were truncated. Drats! Had to start over from scratch.

Thanks for the heads up on the global setting. I had been changing that each time I opened a file but now I have changed it in global settings to "6" places. That should cover it.

PT

Bento is nice for many database tasks, but for some things you may need FileMaker.

Numbers is really nice, the interface is slick and it looks good. I remember when Keynote came out I looked at it and at Powerpoint and PP just seemed lame in comparison. Keynote makes the presentation look professional.

For most of the editing and creating I do I just use a beefcake text editor (TextWrangler). It seems too much work to do it in excel/neo office/numbers.

It isn't a bug where NeoOffice cuts decimal points off. It is a setting and the default is not what YOU want it to be. For some people excel doesn't handle enough decimal places and they have to use something like SPSS/SAS.

I was finding that .csv files with the Excel file icon would sometimes give me trouble either in loading problems, or in truncating numbers in columns. When I get a csv file with an Excel icon I drag and drop it over TextEdit (I keep it in my Dock). That opens the file and lets me see if there are any errors; I then select Save and the file is now a TextEdit file with a .csv suffix.