Creating a Simple Format CSV File

WorldServer does not import Excel format spreadsheets directly, so before import, you must export your Excel glossaries using the Microsoft Excel CSV export functionality. That is, simply perform an Excel Save As, specifying the CSV format. This creates a Simple Format CSV file, which can be imported in the Delimited File: Simple Format mode.

For terms in languages not representable in the Latin-1 character set, the resulting CSV file cannot be imported by WorldServer. When you save your Excel glossary as CSV, Excel saves it in the default (or current) encoding installed on your operating system, which is likely to be unable to handle all possible characters. If the native encoding is Latin-1, the resulting CSV encoding is not sufficient to represent non-European languages like Japanese. Moreover, Excel—through version 2003—does not offer the option of setting a different character encoding for the CSV export. By the time WorldServer gets the CSV file for import, the file is corrupt. You need an alternative way to export glossaries in non-Latin-1 languages into CSV without corrupting the terms.

One way to create a Simple Format CSV File from an Excel file, if you need a Unicode encoding, is the following:

  1. Open your Excel file containing your terminology information.
  2. Save the file as the Unicode Text File <filename>.txt.

You can now import the file, specifying the field delimiter as tab, because Excel saves the file as tab delimited.

Note: You also can create Simple Format CSV files when you export a terminology database selecting the Delimited File: Simple Format option.
Parent topic: Terminology Database Import Options

Alternative CSV Creation

An alternative approach is to export from the Calc spreadsheet program from OpenOffice.org and specify Unicode encoding. OpenOffice 2.0.2 is a free download from the openoffice.org website.

  1. Open the Excel glossary in OpenOffice's Calc.
  2. Select File > Save As.
  3. Select Save As type: Text CSV (.csv), and check the Edit filter settings check box.
  4. Click your way to the field options dialog, where you have an option to set the Character set. This is Windows-1252 by default, but you should select a Unicode encoding like UTF-8.
  5. Click OK. You have exported an Excel glossary to CSV in a Unicode encoding.