Applications

 

Help Sections:

General

Writer

Impress

Math

Draw

Calc

Base

Basic

Text

Specifies the settings for importing a database in text format.

In a text format database, data is stored in an unformatted ASCII file, where each record comprises a row. The data fields are divided by separators, and text in the data fields by quotation marks.

You can use the text format database to import data from other databases, or applications.

Text contains header

Select this check box if the first line of the text file contains field names.

Field separator

Enter or select the character that separates data fields in the text file.

Text separator

Enter or select the character that identifies a text field in the text file. You cannot use the same character as the field separator.

Decimal separator

Enter or select the character that is used as a decimal separator in the text file, for example, a period (0.5) or a comma (0,5).

Thousands separator

Enter or select the character that is used as a thousands separator in the text file, for example a comma (1,000), or a period (1.000).

Extension

Select the format for the text file. The extension that you select affects some of the default settings in this dialog. For example, the *.csv extension changes the character set to system and the field delimiter to comma (,), and the *.txt and *.sdf extensions change the field delimiter to a semicolon (;).

Use SQL92 naming constraints

Only allows names that use characters that conform to the SQL92 naming constraints in the data source. All other characters are rejected. Each name must begin with a lower or upper case letter, or an underline ( _ ). The remaining characters can be ASCII letters, underlines, and numbers.

Character Set

Select the code conversion that you want to use to view the database in OpenOffice.org. This does not affect the database. Choose "System" to use the default character set of your operating system. Text and dBase databases are restricted to character sets with a fixed-size character length, where all characters are encoded with the same number of bytes.

To edit a database table in text format

You cannot edit a text format database table after you register it in OpenOffice.org. However, you can import the table into OpenOffice.org Calc, edit it there, and then save it as a text format database table with a new name.

1. Create a new OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheet.

2. Press F4 to open the data source view.

3. Display the text format database table that you want to edit in the data source view.

4. In the data source view, click the column and row header button at the top left to select the entire table.

5. Drag the table to cell A1 in the spreadsheet, and then release.

6. Make the changes that you want.

7. Choose File - Save as, and in the File type box, select the "Text CSV" filter.

8. Click Save.

Index

This help text is published from the OpenOffice-Help files under the Public Documentation License 1.0.