Can excel recognize special format characters in a CSV file?

[cool_capybara]

I am wondering if it is possible to embed any special characters in a .csv file such that Excel will recognize them for formatting purposes. For example, is there any way to tell excel to make a certain delimited field to be bold...or to have the cell merge over two columns? Also, maybe so it knows to format a column width?

Not sure if any of this is possible...any advice?

Thanks!

 

[macleanb]

Have a look at data import - I think this will be the way to go - you dont want to go inventing another format (do you )...

 

[cool_capybara]

Re: Can excel recognize special format characters in a CSV f

Thanks for the reply.

I'm certainly not trying to invent another format ...I'm just wondering if there is anything in place. In terms of data import -- are you suggesting that I just format as I import the data? Since this is a high volume task, I am hoping we can automate the import process, that's why it would be ideal if we could embed characters in the file itself that Excel might recognize. I realize it goes against the .CSV idea and standard itself, but it seems like something Excel might be able to do...

 

[macleanb]

Hi

I was suggesteing using import rather than open - which seems to support more formats (I'm no expert in this area)

Wheres this data coming from - I was thinking that most other programs will support one of the formats on the import list (eg XML/HTML) which support lots of funky attributes.