NEWBIE - Using Special Character

CSiagatonu

I'm trying to find a list of all the special character Navision 3.7 doesn't like to see. I've been told not to use the #, *, ", ' when doing an import dataport, but I don't know why. Can anyone help me please? I would greatly appreciate any words of wisdom, insight, knowledge. Thanks! i hope someone can shed a little light on this for me. [-o<

DenSter

You can safely import any character you want, as long as you are careful not to use a character as field end delimiter or separator that also exists as a value in one of the fields.

For instance, when you create a dataport, the default field start and end delimiter is the double quote ("). We had a customer that used this character in Item descriptions to designate the length of their product in inches. Now when Navision is importing a value that includes the " character, it thinks that it's the end of the value and it will put the rest of the value into the next field.

What I found most useful is to use nothing as field start and end, and to use the tab character for field separators.

Savatage

Mainly it's due to Navisions Filters.

Some of these characters will make filtering a problem.

for example:
<2000&>1000 : Numbers that are less than 2000 and greater than 1000.
[so you don't want to use &]

The & sign cannot be used by itself with numbers because no record can have two numbers.

Different from <>0 : All numbers except 0
Greater than >1200 : Numbers greater than 1200
Greater than or equal to >=1200 : Numbers greater than or equal to 1200
Less than <1200 : Numbers less than 1200
Less than or equal to <=1200 : Numbers less than or equal to 1200
[So you don't want to use < or > or =]

An indefinite number of unknown characters (may be none)
*Co* : Texts that contain "Co"
*Co : Texts that end with "Co"
Co* :Texts that begin with "Co"
[So you don't want to use *]

One unknown character
Hans?n : Texts such as Hansen or Hanson
[So you don't want to use ?]

Ignore case (either uppercase or lowercase allowed)
@location : Texts such as LOCATION, location or Location.
[So you don't want to use @]

You can also combine the various format expressions:
5999|8100..8490 : Include any records with the number 5999 or a number from the interval 8100 through 8490.
..1299|1400.. : Include records with a number less than or equal to 1299 or a number equal to 1400 or greater - that is, all numbers except 1300 through 1399.
[So you don't want to use |]

I guess those are some reasons why..Keep it clean - you'll be happy you did. O:)

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EDIT
hmm..I see Denster's reply - I thought the question was about why shouldn't they use special characters in the data they are importing???

Kowa

The single quote ' can lead to problems, because some users press the single quote twice '' instead of pressing the double quote key ". If you start searching for double quotes, you will never find the two adjacent single quotes.

Some systems enclose double quotes in texts in two extra double quotes when exporting (csv-standard) . These have to be removed manually before importing these files.

Marije_Brummel

You should simply avoid using the fielddelimiter characters in your fields.

Besides that Harry has made a very good post. =D>

Savatage

Thanks - but I forgot the ' & "
parts

I have found when exporting or importating data a stray comma always causes a problem

so I try to tell our A/R dept not to type names in like

Bob's Stores, Inc.

Bobs Stores Inc - works just fine