CSV again

[Vasil Vasilev]

Hi,

First, thanks for a great program. I've been using it for about two years now 
with almost no problems.

I saw the few postings in the arhive on the issue on the CSV for exporting to, 
say Excel. I'd like to do that as well so that I can share some of the 
accounting data with others who use Excel. I understand the problem of what
constitutes a proper format for exporting. I think I have a solution for quite 
a few cases (but definitely not all).

In my case, I just do a transaction report, then cut and paste into gnumeric. 
The advantage of this is that the report solves the problem of what is 
exported. Then enter "Tab" as a separator in gnumeric import. Now to the 
problem. The table is formatted as you would expect in the report (and html 
file) but when exported the "Total" for months and accounts get in the wrong 
column in the spreadsheet as there is only one "tab" between "Total for May 
2004" and the amount. Using netscape to display the report from the export html 
file displays it correctly but doesn't put extra tabs. I haven't tried other 
browsers.

My request is to allow for optional empty cells in the report for the totals. 
This should solve the problem the exporting of reporting into "Tab Separated 
Values", which is more usefull IMHO than CSV as I actually have commas in 
transaction descriptions. Tab's are very easily convertable into commas too.

I currently have a workaround for those who would like to use this method, 
which is to put a custom separator as well as Tab in gnumeric: "For" or 
"Total". These only work for three collumns; the first still has Grand Total 
misalligned and the second missed Total from the spreadsheet, and hence are not 
ideal. Cut and paste is fairly automatic, editting the result isn't.

PS. A while ago I've posted bug/enhancement request (bug 137017) about time 
zone changes problem. Is there any intention to do anything about it? (Yes or 
No will do).

Thanks again for a great product which you don't sell.


Vasil
-- 
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.