Exporting Data to a Delimited Text File

Sometimes you may need to extract data from your CatBase database in a delimited plain text file format, such as a csv or tab-delimited file, so that it can be imported into another application such as a spreadsheet or another database. This is very easy to accomplish with CatBase.

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You have endless options when selecting your export file format.

• Select a field delimiter (comma, tab, pipe etc.) or choose a custom delimiter (any character you like)

• Select a record delimiter (Return, line feed, pipe, or a custom character)

• Choose whether you want to include field names in the first row

• You can tell CatBase to replace embedded return characters with some other character. Why would you want to do this? Let's say you are planning to open your text file in a spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel. It doesn't give you the option to choose a record delimiter: it expects each record (or row) to end with a Return character. So, if you have a text field (such as a description field) in your CatBase data, and it might contain return characters, this would throw Excel into confusion as it would think that each Return signified the end of a record. Avoid this problem by telling CatBase to replace any embedded Return characters with a character, or string of characters, that you specify – for example, a tilde (~). Make sure you choose something that definitely will not appear anywhere in your data! Of course, you may then have to convert those characters back to Returns after you've opened the text file in Excel (or imported it into another application)

• Include data from related tables

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Learn more about Publishing Stylesheets