Excel Unicode appearing literally in cell value - excel

I've got strings in an Excel table that have literal unicode values, i.e.   and I'm trying to compare them to another string which instead of the unicode string, has simply a space.
How do I do this? I tried this:
textref = replace(textref, ChrW$(160), " ")
as well as
textref = replace(textref, " ", " ")
and I can't seem to get it to work. Alternatively, is there a way to make Excel render the text as spaces?
Thanks in advance

Related

Vietnamese Unicode characters string error (showing "?")

I am using Excel VBA, I have an error when I assign Vietnamese-Unicode character values in variable or MsgBox, like this:
Range("A1").Value = "Nguyễn Văn Bình"
MsgBox(Sheet5.Range("a453").Value
It results with: Nguy?n V?n B?nh
Is there a way to work around this?

VBA Special characters U+2264 and U+2265

I have a frustrating problem. I have a string containg other characters that are not in this list (check link). My string represents a SQL Query.
This is an example of what my string can contain: INSERT INTO test (description) VALUES ('≤ ≥ >= <=')
When I check the database, the row is inserted successfully, but the characters "≤" and "≥" are replaced with "=" character.
In the database the string in description column looks like "= = >= <=".
For the most characters I can get a character code. I googled a character code for those two symbols, but I didn't find one. My goal is to check if my string contains this two characters , and afterwards replace them with ">=" and "<="
===Later Edit===
I have tried to check every character in a for loop;
tmp = Mid$(str, i, 1)
tmp will have the value "=" when my for loop reaches the "≤" character, so Excel cannot read this "≤" character in a VB string, then when I'm checking for character code I get the code for "=" (Chr(61))
Are you able to figure out what the character codes for both "≤" and "≥" in your database character set are? if so then maybe try replacing both characters in your query string with chrw(character_code).
I have just tested something along the lines of what you are trying to do using Excel as my database - and it looks to work fine.
Edit: assuming you are still stuck and looking for assistance here - could you confirm what database you are working with, and any type information setting for the "description" field you are looking to insert your string into?
Edit2: I am not familiar with SQL server, but isn't your "description" field set up to be of a certain data type? if so what is it and does it support unicode characters? ncharvar, nchar seem to be examples of sql server data types that support Unicode.
It sounds like you may also want to try and add an "N" prefix to the value in your query string - see
Do I have use the prefix N in the "insert into" statement for unicode? &
how to insert unicode text to SQL Server from query window
Edit3: varchar won't qualify for proper rendering of Unicode - see here What is the difference between varchar and nvarchar?. Can you switch to nvarchar? as mentionned above, you may also want to prefix the values in your query string with 'N' for full effect
Edit4: I can't speak much more about sqlserver, but what you are looking at here is how VBA displays the character, not at how it actually stores it in memory - which is the bottom line. VBA won't display "≤" properly since it doesn't support the Unicode character set. However, it may - and it does - store the binary representation correctly.
For any evidence of this, just try and paste back the character to another cell in Excel from VBA, and you will retrieve the original character - or look at the binary representation in VBA:
Sub test()
Dim s As String
Dim B() As Byte
'8804 is "≤" character in Excel character set
s = ChrW(8804)
'Assign memory representation of s to byte array B
B = s
'This loop prints "100" and "34", respectively the low and high bytes of s coding in memory
'representing binary value 0010 0010 0110 0100 ie 8804
For i = LBound(B) To UBound(B)
Debug.Print B(i)
Next i
'This prints "=" because VBA can not render character code 8804 properly
Debug.Print s
End Sub
If I copy your text INSERT INTO test (description) VALUES ('≤ ≥ >= <=') and paste it into the VBA editor, it becomes INSERT INTO test (description) VALUES ('= = >= <=').
If I paste that text into a Excel cell or an Access table's text field, it pastes "correctly".
This seems to be a matter of character code supported, and I suggest you have a look at this SO question.
But where in you program does that string come from, since it cannot be typed in VBA ??
Edit: I jus gave it a try with the below code, and it works like a charm for transferring your exotic characters from the worksheet to a table !
Sub test1()
Dim db As Object, rs As Object, cn As Object
Set cn = CreateObject("DAO.DBEngine.120")
Set db = cn.OpenDatabase("P:\Database1.accdb")
Set rs = db.OpenRecordset("table1")
With rs
.addnew
.Fields(0) = Range("d5").Value
.Update
End With
End Sub

Adding a newline character within a cell (CSV)

I would like to import product descriptions that need to be logically broken according by things like description, dimensions, finishes etc. How can I insert a line break so that when I import the file they will show up?
This question was answered well at Can you encode CR/LF in into CSV files?.
Consider also reverse engineering multiple lines in Excel. To embed a newline in an Excel cell, press Alt+Enter. Then save the file as a .csv. You'll see that the double-quotes start on one line and each new line in the file is considered an embedded newline in the cell.
I struggled with this as well but heres the solution. If you add " before and at the end of the csv string you are trying to display, it will consolidate them into 1 cell while honoring new line.
csvString += "\""+"Date Generated: \n" ;
csvString += "Doctor: " + "\n"+"\"" + "\n";
I have the same issue, when I try to export the content of email to csv and still keep it break line when importing to excel.
I export the conent as this: ="Line 1"&CHAR(10)&"Line 2"
When I import it to excel(google), excel understand it as string. It still not break new line.
We need to trigger excel to treat it as formula by:
Format -> Number | Scientific.
This is not the good way but it resolve my issue.
supposing you have a text variable containing:
const text = 'wonderful text with \n newline'
the newline in the csv file is correctly interpreted having enclosed the string with double quotes and spaces
'" ' + text + ' "'
On Excel for Mac 2011, the newline had to be a \r instead of an \n
So
"\"first line\rsecond line\""
would show up as a cell with 2 lines
I was concatenating the variable and adding multiple items in same row. so below code work for me. "\n" new line code is mandatory to add first and last of each line if you will add it on last only it will append last 1-2 character to new lines.
$itemCode = '';
foreach($returnData['repairdetail'] as $checkkey=>$repairDetailData){
if($checkkey >0){
$itemCode .= "\n".trim(#$repairDetailData['ItemMaster']->Item_Code)."\n";
}else{
$itemCode .= "\n".trim(#$repairDetailData['ItemMaster']->Item_Code)."\n";
}
$repairDetaile[]= array(
$itemCode,
)
}
// pass all array to here
foreach ($repairDetaile as $csvData) {
fputcsv($csv_file,$csvData,',','"');
}
fclose($csv_file);
I converted a pandas DataFrame to a csv string using DataFrame.to_csv() and then I looked at the results. It included \r\n as the end of line character(s). I suggest inserting these into your csv string as your row separation.
Depending on the tools used to generate the csv string you may need escape the \ character (\r\n).

Export Excel : Avoid stripping the leading zeros

I am Export a data to Excel Sheet in C#.Net. There i am having column which has the data like "00123450098". The data is exported without the first zero's. I want to show the data as it is.
Here is my export excel code.
string style = #"<style> .text { mso-number-format:\#; } </style> ";
HttpContext.Current.Response.Clear();
HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader(
"content-disposition", string.Format("attachment; filename={0}", fileName));
HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = "application/ms-excel";
HtmlForm frm = new HtmlForm();
...................
...................
table.RenderControl(htw);
HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(style);
//render the htmlwriter into the response
HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(sw.ToString());
HttpContext.Current.Response.End();
While exporting to excel, adding \t before the value being inserted will solve the problem.
Eg:
string test = "000456";
string insertValueAs = "\t" + test;
The string test would then be considered as a string value and not an integer value. Thus, it would retain the leading zeros.
I have faced the same issue, and above solution worked for me. Hope this post helps!
If exporting to CSV / TSV, put this into each cell containing a textual "number" with leading 0s or (especially) 16+ digits:
="0012345"
..where 0012345 is the number you want to export to that cell.
I wish I could remember where I saw that.
In Excel file, Numbers cell always strips the leading zeros, you can set numbers with leading zeros by following a single quote. i.e.
00123450098 to '00123450098
but then, the format for that cell will changes to text.
If your generated excel file, have any formula, which is include that cell reference as number then it will not work as expected.
I had this problem as well. The solution I came up with was to sneak the leading zeros in using excel's built in char() function. In excel, char() returns the value of the ASCII character code that is passed to it, so char(048) returns 0.
Before exporting to excel, prepend your variable like so...
varName = "=CHAR(048)&" + varName;
I found my answer for this using a combination of StackOverflow link and a blog.
There are excel formatting styles that can be applied to the gridview on rowdatabound. I used those and now my export does not strip the leading zeros.
Below is an example of my code.
ExpenseResultsGrid.RowDataBound += new GridViewRowEventHandler(ExpenseResultsGrid_RowDataBound);
protected void AllQuartersGrid_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)
{
if (e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow)
{//add this style to prevent truncating leading zeros in fund code during export to excel
e.Row.Cells[2].Attributes.CssStyle.Add("mso-number-format", "\\#");
}
}
While exporting, just add an empty string like "" before the value that is inserted:
string x = "000123";
myWorksheet.Cells[1,1] = "" + x;

Converting unicode fraction characters (vulgar fractions) to decimals in Excel 2003

I'm trying to convert the following text to a decimal number in excel 2003:
"93⅛"
The output should be: 93.125
I've gotten this to work with ¼, ½, ¾ by using the Replace function in VBA:
For example, this works:
cur_cell = Replace(cur_cell, "½", " 1/2")
However, the ⅛ and family characters are not supported in the VBA editor. They display as ??. Instead, I tried to replace the unicode value directly:
cur_cell = Replace(cur_cell, " & ChrW$(&H215B) & ", " 1/8")
But this doesn't work.
Is there a good way to convert these strings to numbers that I can use?
The correct syntax is:
cur_cell = Replace(cur_cell, ChrW$(&H215B), " 1/8")
Your example was saying: replace the string consisting of a space, an ampersand, a space [etc.] with 1/8. Clearly that's not what you want to do!
I'd actually recommend:
cur_cell.Value = Replace(Replace(cur_cell.Value, ChrW$(&H215B), ".125")," ","")
to circumvent Excel's automatic replacement of fractions. I just don't like to rely on that kind of automatic stuff. Why not write it as a decimal number straight off? Also, I like explicitly refering to the cell's .Value property as opposed to relying on it being the default property.

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