I am downloading information from SMHI in Sweden and want ti switch some columns to LibreOffice where I want to use formulas of those columnes.
How do I fix that?
Leif
Depends on the csv file. csv is not a file format. csv is plain text following certain conventions. There are thousands of different flavours of csv out there.
13.09.2023;1848597405;"Überweisung;blah;blah;blah";563.68;1234.96
is a typical line of my bank account as shown in a plain text editor. Columns are separated by semicolon.
- A German date
- some integer number
- a text in double-quotes. Semicolons may occur within this text.
- a point decimal
- another point decimal
SMHI offers environmental data for downloading data in text files and the exact flavour of text is up to you. A row I’ve downloaded from SharkWeb looks like this:
Bacterioplankton Klar Leverantör 2022 07 F3 / A5 A5 135412 200712 NAT Nationell miljöövervakning Havs- och vattenmyndigheten 77K9 18 733177efb6c1e8563c25af4a17e47f46 2022-07-06 09:30 65 10.00 23 14.02 65,16667 23,23367 GPS 91 25 7 1 3 3 0 4,0 43 32991 1 1 Umeå Universitet Y NSK 5 Bacteria 5000052 6 Bacterial cell carbon content 16,80 fg C/cell 1 IMA Helcom COMBINE Manual - Part C Annex C12 HC-C-C12 Umeå Universitet Y 2022-09-15 4 FOR 5 24292 Utsjövatten Övriga områden utanför Sverige Del av Bottenvikens utsjövatten 01 - Bottenviken HELCOM RP Bacteria Bacteria Ej rödlistad 5000052 Umeå Universitet Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) http://sharkweb.smhi.se, http://sharkdata.se SHARK_Bacterioplankton_ABU_2022_UMSC_Bactabund SHARK_Bacterioplankton_ABU_2022_UMSC_Bactabund_version_2023-06-02.zip
The row is separated by tabs.
It contains Swedish text in Windows 1252 encoding (as set by default on the website)
It contains ISO dates (2022-12-31) and ISO times (23:45:59).
It contains comma decimals.
Therefore, I open the file with Calc and apply the following import options:
- Character set:: Windows 1252
- Language: Swedish (Sweden)
- Separator: Tab
- String delimiter: Empty (there aren’t any string delimiters)
- Detect special numbers: Yes (dates and times)
These data sets are designed for use in databases. You may take some snapshots in a spreadsheet for one-off analysis. Spreadsheets are unsuitable to store large data collections.
1 Like
Hi, I have done something similar to what think you are doing. I download my Amazon csv files, then open in Calc. Then save as calc file. My use case is trimming down and save, then search for item, tells me date purchased and other information I need. You could try with a small file and see if it will work for you. Possibly may have to format columns to suit the data you are working with. Like @Villeroy states there are multiple csv formats.
Thank you @Villeroy for the explanation of the data involved which helped me to better understand the full picture. Just a question OT on my end what is suitable to store large data collections? Learn something by asking.
Databases.
.
For “spreadsheet-like” locally available files I use sqlite. For Web-accessible data MariaDB. And there is a lot mire available. More stable and quicker than any spreadsheet, after you managed the initial setup and some basic SQL.
1 Like