Field Separators and Escapes

You may ignore this section if you are using the Content Editor. It applies only when using an external CSV file as a content source.

In a CSV file, each row is a line of text. Within each line, fields are separated by either commas, tabs, or semicolons (but these may not be mixed in the same document).

Multideck determines which separator is used automatically. The first row of content contains the column names. The number of commas, semicolons, and tabs in that first row is counted; whichever occurs the most is assumed to be the field separator character.

If you are creating your CSV file by exporting from a spreadsheet, you may ignore the rest of this section. Spreadsheets handle special characters automatically when they export, and you don't need to worry about it.

If you are directly editing your CSV file instead of exporting from a spreadsheet, you must know how to handle special characters when they occur as literal text within a field.

A field may be quoted using straight (not curly) double-quote characters if it needs to include field separator characters or newline characters as part of the field's value. If a field begins with a double-quote, its value is considered to extend to the next double-quote; the enclosing quote characters are then stripped and do not appear in the field's value. (Note that this means that a single row of content may occupy multiple lines of a CSV file, if you have included newlines as field content and properly quoted them.) A quoted field may include literal double-quote characters by doubling them. Here are examples, where comma is the field separator character:

one,two,three => second field's value is two
one,"two",three => second field's value is two
one,"two,three”,four => second field's value is two,three
one,"two,""three"",four",five => second field's value is two,"three",four