Are there any pc experts on here on the software side of pc's?
I'm having some problems saving some data from an Access database. I'm saving the data as a csv file and for some strange reason ever record has a small square box added to it, i.e.
artist title
"A Tribe Called Quest□" "Can I Kick It?□"

It's a format problem but I can't work out how to get rid of these squares or how to save the data so that these aren't displaying.
Not the clearest explanation of the problem but hopefully someone will have a clue of what the hell I'm going on about?

Eskie, I'm not an expert with Access (or computers in general) but I'll see if I can help. First question is really stupid though; why are you needing to save it as a CSV file and what is a CSV file?

If you're doing it so you can export the data to say excel or similar, it might be best to save it as a text file. One of my mates who is much more into this sort of stuff, always resorts to saving data as a text file if all fails as he can then normally upload it into whatever, once he has de-limted it.

Regards, Ian Stuart

If you can PM me a couple of records from your database I'll have a look at it for you. Which version of Access are you using, as I'll have to install the same version. Access is a real pain for different versions.

Just thought of a quick fix for you. Open the file in Wordpad or Word and use replace. Put the character in the search for box, leave the second box empty and choose replace all.

lol, great minds thinkalike. I just did that a few minutes ago, although it's gonna take a while as there are over 70,000 records to go through with 2 fields in each record and this 'square' is at the end of every field!

What Delimiter are you using when creating the CSV file from Access? If its a version that prompts you for a delimiter... The empty square is usually displayed when "undisplayable characters" are encounters in imported fields.

Thanks a lot to all those who offered help. I managed to sort it out in the end, as i remembered the process that I used to use which worked fine. Have now exported all the data with no problems.

7000 songs, is that all unique records or have you included the 'DJ Happy vs DJ Happier Remixed USA version' of the song that seems to be track 5 on the CD single and the instrumental, plus the album version etc etc etc

CSV is comma seperated something (probably version), I can't remember now.

A tip for anyone thinking of using Excel for Cataloguing. The autofilter will only list up to 1000 unique items. If you have more than 1000 unique entries ie: titles, then you have to use find.