Question about CSV files

[BDGibson4]

Is there any way to compensate (without using any VBA) for blank cells?

The files I am creating need to be in an Excel.csv format. The issue is the top row only has data in A1. The rest are B1:{varies}5. When importing this into a separate system (that I do not control) this leaves A2:A5 as ,,,,

This will be compounded in some instances where after the main data set there is a blank row followed by another set of data of similar structure.

Unfortunately the receiving device requires this very specific formatting.

I understand that is how .csv is suppose to work, but is there a simple way to add constraint onto the actual data so this does not occur?

Thank you in advance,
Cody

 

[Joe4]

Welcome to the Board!

The files I am creating need to be in an Excel.csv format

Note that Excel and CSV are two different, distinct file formats (there is no "Excel CSV" format, there is an "Excel" format, and a "CSV" format).

Unfortunately, I do not know of any way to do what you want without some sort of scripting, whether that is VBA or or some other code outside of Excel.
When you save from an Excel file to a CSV file, every row will have the same number of columns (fields), which will always be the length of the longest row in your Excel file.
I don't know of any way to get around that default behavior, unless you do it in pieces manually.

I did something like that years ago, where I had to create text files from Excel that had different header and trailer rows from the rest of the data.
I did that by copying just my header row to a new tab, and saving that as one text file.
Then I copied all my data to another tab, and saved that as another text file.
Lastly, I copied my trailer row to a third tab, and saved that as my last text file.
Then I used some VBScript to combine all three files into one.

 

[6StringJazzer]

I agree with @Joe4 . You need VBA to create the file, or you need to use a text editor or other scripting language to edit the resulting .csv file.