Data Merge file format?

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
June 25, 2024
2 replies
906 views

Okay, so I decided to do a little experimenting with data merge, since I don't remember the last time I used the ID version.

I have just spent an hour trying to craft a data file that Data Merge will recognize, and despite all efforts, using Excel to create a sample sequence file and typing in a few simple ones in Notepad++, and trying both .csv (with comma separators) and .txt (using tabs)... I get the "source file you have selected either has no records or is not a supported format" error.

I've done CSV etc. data work. I understand the format and delimiters and so forth. I am checking everying I can think of. Why would ID (19.4, Win11) refuse to see any of these files as valid data?

Import and export

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BobLevine

Community Expert

As Peter notes, the field names have to be in the first row. Can you post a sample file so we can take a look here?

Peter Spier

Community Expert

Did you put field names in the first row?

James Gifford—NitroPressAuthor

Legend

Yep. Here's one simple file, typed in Notepad++—

[names.csv]

Name,Number
Fred,1
Joe,2
Frank,3
Bob,4
Jim,0

—which refused to work, even after conversion to tabs and .txt filename.

My starting file was a 10,000-entry numbers file generated in Excel (messing with that QR code request in another post):

—saved first as .csv—

—and renamed as .txt, just to check.

Both of which work, now, for reasons that absolutely elude me. Other than that I may have had the .csv file open in Excel, which produces a different error, I am getting completely different results from exactly the same steps (repeated with care multiple times). This stuff drives me crazy and I understand bewildered newcomers' problems a lot better as a result.

I still don't understand what's wrong with the first file.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

Might be the encoding?

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