Multiline CSV export to Excel produces unrecognized characters?

[Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch]

On Sun, 23 Mar 2008 23:30:11 -0700, felciano wrote:

> The following reproduces the problem in python 2.5:
> 
> import csv
> row = [1,"hello","this is\na multiline\ntext field"]
> writer = csv.writer(open("test.tsv", "w"), dialect="excel-tab",
> quotechar='"')
> writer.writerow(row)
> 
> When opening the resulting test.tsv file, I do indeed see a cell with
> a multi-line value, but there is a small boxed question mark at the
> end of each of the lines, as if Excel didn't recognize the linebreak.
> 
> Any idea why these are there or how to get rid of them?

Any chance you are doing this on Windows and Excel doesn't like the
return+linefeed line endings that Windows produces when writing files in
text mode?  Try 'wb' as mode for the output file.

Ciao,
	Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch