Notes on the text format

<< Click to Display Table of Contents >>

Notes on the text format

As mentioned in the previous section, you can also open and save plain text files (including e.g. CSV files) with PlanMaker:

To open a text file, use the ribbon command File | Open (click directly on the icon itself) to open the file dialog box, simply select the desired file and confirm the opening.

To save a document as a text file, select the ribbon command File | Save as, select Text file in the Save as type list, enter the desired file name and confirm the saving.

In both cases, a dialog box appears where you can specify the format of the text file.

The dialog box provides the following options:

Options available when saving text files

When you save a document as a text file, the following settings can be made in the dialog box:

Character set

Here you can specify which character set to use when the text file is saved.
Note: PlanMaker suggests a suitable character set automatically. Usually, there is no need to change this setting.

Data format

Here you can specify in which way the cell contents should be stored in the text file. The following options are available:
Separators between fields: If you choose this option, the cell contents will be separated by a certain character (for example, a semicolon or a tab).
Example:
Peter;Miller;24;Main Street
Elizabeth;Jones-Nightingdale;1733;University Drive
Fixed field widths: If you choose this option, the cell contents will be distributed over columns with a fixed width. Gaps will be filled with spaces.
Example:
Peter      Miller              24    Main Street
Elizabeth  Jones-Nightingdale  1733  University Drive

Separator

Here you can choose which character should be used to separate the individual cell contents from each other (e.g., semicolons or tabs).

Note: The separator must not occur within cell contents; if it does, PlanMaker will of course treat it as such would split such cells into two entries.

Text marker

If desired, PlanMaker can surround the content of all cells that contain text with a certain character (e.g. quotation marks).
If you want this, choose the desired character here.
With the option Auto, no text marker is set in principle. Unless there is a line break or a quotation mark already occurring in a cell. Then additional quotation marks are set for these cells as a text marker.

Encoding of newlines

Here, you can select the control characters to insert at the end of each line (to indicate the beginning of a new line).
Note: PlanMaker suggests suitable control characters automatically. Usually, there is no need to change this setting.
Available options:
CR+LF: This is the recommended setting for Windows.
LF: This is the recommended setting for Linux and Mac.
CR: This control character was common on older Apple Mac systems (before macOS).

Options available when opening text files

When you open a text file, most of the same options are available as when saving. Use these options as described above to specify the format of the text file you want to open.

There are some additional options when opening files:

Number of header lines

If the first few lines of your text file contain headings (or, lines with some explanatory text, etc.), enter the number of these lines here. This will instruct PlanMaker not to split these lines into columns like the rest of the data. The header lines will be left unchanged and stored into just one cell per line.
The default value is 0 (i.e., no header lines).

Separators (several can be selected at the same time)

To facilitate the separation of text in more complex text files, it is possible to select different separators at the same time.

Change data type in the preview window

In the preview window, the data type can be adjusted for each column by clicking on the header.
For example, change the data type of a column to text so that numbers with leading zeros (as in telephone area codes) are retained.