View semicolon-separated .csv files in gnumeric

Question

I have a semicolon-separated csv file over here, and I would like to be able to look at it with gnumeric. Sadly, gnumeric does not read the semicolon as a separator.

I have tried:

• appending sep=; on the first line
• clicking through the GUI menus
• using sed to replace the semicolons with commas (sadly, that leads to breakage, since by document occasionally uses commas within cells

What else can I do?

Answer 1

In recent versions of gnumeric a new Import Data tool is available. To launch the tool choose Data|Import Data|Import Text File... from the menu.

1. In the Import Data File dialog choose your file and hit Open.
2. In the next screen select Separated format and click Forward
3. In the following screen select a separator from a number of available options and click Forward once again to choose the columns to import.
4. Click Finish to complete.

Answer 2

Solution that worked for me in a comma separated csv file with dot decimal separators:

1. Open .csv file from a text editor

2. replace all "," with ";" (semicolon)

3. replace all dot decimal separators "." with ","

4. save file

5. open gnumeric, go to Data -> Get External Data -> Import Text File and then open the saved file

6. hit Forward and Finish

7. save as a gnumeric file