and from memory, you can also tell excel what the data type of each column in a csv file is.
Nicolas Goaziou writes: > Hello, > > Thomas von Dein <t...@vondein.org> writes: > >> currently when exporting a table to CSV, fields are quoted automatically >> if they contain a comma or a quote character. The regexp for this >> determination is hard-coded in 'org-quote-csv-field. >> >> This is good for most use cases. However, if you want to import such a >> CSV with MS Excel then some unquoted fields will be automatically >> converted by Excel into another format. >> >> An example is a field containing 192.168.10.233. 'org-quote-csv-field >> doesn't quote it, but Excel - for reasons I cannot fathom - considers >> this a number (it doesn't do this when the last octet is below 233 >> though) and converts it to 19216810233 - which is wrong. >> >> I wrote the following code to circumvent this Excel bug: >> >> (defun tvd-org-quote-csv-field (s) >> "Quote every field and precede it with = to disable excel automatisms." >> (if (string-match "." s) >> (concat "=\"" (mapconcat 'identity >> (split-string s "\"") "\"\"") "\"") >> s)) >> >> (defun table-to-excel () >> "export current org table to CSV format suitable for MS Excel." >> (interactive) >> ;; quote everything, map temporarily 'org-quote-csv-field >> ;; to my version >> (cl-letf (((symbol-function 'org-quote-csv-field) >> #'tvd-org-quote-csv-field)) >> (org-table-export "/tmp/ex.csv" "orgtbl-to-csv"))) >> >> To make this customizable, it would be good to have a variable which >> contains the regex to determine what to quote. A parameter to >> org-table-export would be an even better solution. > > It is already possible. When asked for a format for conversion, you can > write something like: > > orgtbl-to-csv :fmt tvd-org-quote-csv-field > > > You can also define your own format: > > (defun my-orgtbl-to-Excel (table params) > "Convert the orgtbl-mode table to Excel. > This does take care of the proper quoting of fields with comma or quotes." > (orgtbl-to-generic table > (org-combine-plists '(:sep "," :fmt > tvd-org-quote-csv-field) > params))) > > and use it when prompted for a format in `org-table-export'. > > Regards, -- Tim Cross