Leanly and dynamically merging all CSV files in a folder, to appear on one sheet

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#1

I have a LibreOffice Calc document where I want to do calculations on standardized CSV files all found in the same folder, but I don’t wish to manually import each and every file into Calc. The files will all have the same format, so I don’t want the spreadsheet to care if I remove, swap or add files from one time to the next. I just want all of them to appear in the same sheet.

I am fine if the solution involves linking to a database, if all the same conditions are fulfilled. I already tried and found that with Base I could import all CSV files in a folder, but I found no way of dynamically merging them. The only options I could find involved statically naming each and every table involved.

To be clear, I do NOT want to create a separate sheet for every file like this answer: Multiple csv/ods files into individual tabs in single spreadsheet. The file contents should all appear in one sheet and the contents should change when updated if the original files have been swapped out.

#2

If I faced such a task, I would create a concatenation of all the standardized SCVs in a single CSV; and would link to that CSV as a separate sheet (which would update automatically). That way, just executing something like copy sourcedir\*.csv outdir\all-in-one.csv command line would do it for me.

#3

Probably Apache OpenOffice Community Forum - Merge multiple CSV with same Header - (View topic) ?
(I didn’t use the original code nor one of the additionally suggested solutions.)

#5

@Lupp It looked like a good thread, but one creates separate file and another requires CLI usage. The third links to a template that does hold your hand quite a bit but I can’t use the template outright. Maybe I can salvage something from their macro.

@mikekaganski Unfortunately I need the result to be as streamlined as possible, so I need to avoid any manual steps after setup. That’s why I would prefer a Calc-only solution or one where Base does all the heavy lifting dynamically. To compare with the devil, it’s trivial in Excel after setting up (e.g. Import Data > From file > Folder > Combine & Transform Data)

#6

Make a contract with the devil if he can save your soul.
I can’t advise in detail because I don’t know his forms and conditions.

#7

I don’t know, I’m pretty sure the devil will just take it instead. Jests aside, if this isn’t a feature then I’ll need to open a feature request. This seems like it would be trivial to implement in either Calc or Base, since in the latter you can already import an entire folder dynamically as a database. I just haven’t found a way to query the tables dynamically.

#8

See getTables.

#9

Merge sheets of spreadsheet documents can be set up to merge all csv files on one sheet and move the merged files into another folder to avoid duplicate merges.

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#10

@Villeroy Unfortunately the folder needs to be dynamic so that you can add and remove any constituent file, so no file merges are allowed.

@sokol92 I will look into that, do you have any examples lying around?

#11

Create a sample with your own data in 3 minutes:

  1. Open my template.
  2. Store the new document in a trusted directory allowing macro execution.
  3. Call menu:File>Reload to reload the saved file with macros enabled.
  4. Move some of your files to the same directory as the document. This will be the path that is used by default. Alternatively, click the first push button and select the directory where your files are. This path will be entered in cell B3.
  5. Enter the file name pattern into cell B4. That is *.csv if the names of your text files end with .csv.
  6. If your text files include one column header, enter 1 into cell B7.
  7. Open one of your text files with each and every option set properly.
  8. With the text file in the active window, call menu:Tools>Macros>Run…, navigate to [your spreadsheet document] -> SheetMerge -> FilterOptions -> setFilterOptions and click [Run]. Close the text file. Its import options are stored to cell B9 of your spreadsheet document.
  9. Click the [Go] button.

Results:

  • All the filles will be merged into one large list with the file origin stored in the very first column of that list, below the cell which is named “Target”.
  • The file names in the first column let you filter by origin.
  • You can format the list anyway you want and add all kinds of spreadsheet functionality, formulas, charts, (conditional) formatting, pivot tables, filters etc.
  • You can freely define your column headers.
  • You may rename/rearrange sheets as long as the named cells remain intact, particularly the “Target” cell. Hide the configuration sheet. It is no longer needed.

Next time when you click the [Go] button:

  • If you have the very same files in the source directory, you will get duplicate imports of the same files. This is why I added an option to move the processed file to another directoy.
  • Every import of x rows from some file will insert x new rows into the list. This way all your references in formulas charts, (conditional) formatting, pivot tables, filters etc. will refer to the newly resized list.
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#12

If you really want snapshots of the current files in the source directory, simply delete the cells from the list below the cell named “Target” (that is, cells below the header row).

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#13

A workaround would be to route output of a dir /b or ls-command to another .csv-file, wich would then be a “table of contents”, but you already ruled out command-line.

#14

I guess this with an added button to clear all target-cells should be mostly, what was asked.

#15

One may call a subroutine clearing/deleting the current region below the target cell and call that routine in front of all the other stuff.
However, we are dealing with a spreadsheet here and we have no idea how the actual spreadsheet will look like in the long run. Clearing all contents will leave references like A2:A100. My macro will expand them with the next charge of 80 rows to A2:A180. Deleting all the “old rows” destroys existing references: =SUM($A$#REF!:$A$#REF!).
I realy had an ever growing pseudo-database in mind when I wrote this macro.

Let me suggest a clean solution to this problem:
Store your document with all the setup, your formulas, charts, pivot tables etc. but with no data as a template.
Every time you need a new snapshot from your csv, just open the template, click the macro button or let the macro run automatically on open. Then save or export the resulting report to disk or discard it unsaved.
Solving the reference problem:

  1. Use references like A:A (entire column) or A2:A1048576 (without header row)
  2. Comment out sh.insertCells(adr, com.sun.star.sheet.CellInsertMode.DOWN) in Module1 of library “SheetMerge” within your template.
#16

Under Linux, tail -qn +2 *Input.csv>Concatenated.csv concatenates files ending with Input.csv into one file Concatenated.csv, skipping one header row. Now you can open Concatenated.csv with whatever program.
Since you never mentioned any operating system, let alone other technical info, you must be a Windows user. Windows10 claims to support Linux essentials. If so, this would be the most simple solution.

#17

You can use a complete linux-subsystem, but for one command this is overkill.
I’m using Cygwin since long times, but there are a lot of tools available:

#18

slightly offtopic: IMHO, WSL would be the only reason for me to use windows10|11!

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