Help with Tab Delimited file for SmartStream

[Zyrus]

Hey Guys,
We are having issues with exporting Text (Tab Delimited) files from Excel on a Mac. The Excel file has barcode data in it and when it's printed, the barcodes are not readable by our scanner. We have tried to open the Text file on a PC to get the Barcode to work using the PC version of the font, but Excel says that the Text file is a Japanese Formatted file. We cannot seem to get a handle on where we are going wrong.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

I personally prefer to save .csv files for VDP use from OpenOffice/NeoOffice, as the encoding options appear to be more flexible, although I could be missing something in MS Excel on the PC (Unicode, UTF-8 etc). Can you "flavour" your text file with options such as Unicode, UTF-8 etc?

I am not sure how this factors in with using a barcode font though.

Win:
OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite

Mac:
NeoOffice Home


Stephen Marsh

 

[RGPW17100]

So are you saying you can import the text file using a PC and it works fine but when you try the excel on the mac it wont work? If this is the case I doubt there is a work around. I have had issues with importing mac office files into fedex and UPS and have had weird things happen. File is built the exact way but it will error our or drop lines of type. If I open the same file and save it on the pc then re import it it works fine.

 

[DCurry]

Whatever the font is in Excel is irrelevant - the font used in the design is determined by your page layout file (InDesign or Quark).

 

[Zyrus]

Hey Guys, Thanks so much for the replies.

Can you "flavour" your text file with options such as Unicode, UTF-8 etc?
Stephen Marsh

We have tried Unicode and UTF-8 and nothing has changed. I know I have had luck with .csv files in the past, but this company's workflow uses the .txt files instead. I think we are going to have to challenge that though. As of right now, it seems that another version of Excel on the PC is going to do the trick. I will have to investigate why that is after the job gets done.

If I open the same file and save it on the pc then re import it it works fine.

We are having a similar problem, but the file is not erroring out. It is printing fine, but the barcodes that are generated are not readable by our test scanner.

Whatever the font is in Excel is irrelevant - the font used in the design is determined by your page layout file (InDesign or Quark).

I completely agree, but there is something about the characters in the Excel file on the Mac compared to the PC that cause the barcode to come out wrong. We have still not narrowed the problem down. The operator that handles the db said that characters are either being added in the Mac version of the db that cause the problems, but the PC version does not have the problem.

Thanks again everyone. I am going to have to investigate the steps taken with the variable data because I have not seen all these issues with data files going to an Indigo in the past. I will post on here what I find out, just in case someone else runs into this.

 

[DanB]

Hey Guys, We are having a similar problem, but the file is not erroring out. It is printing fine, but the barcodes that are generated are not readable by our test scanner.

Are you sure that the data contains the proper prefix and sufix characters included for the test scanner.

Dan B

 

[Zyrus]

Are you sure that the data contains the proper prefix and sufix characters included for the test scanner.

Dan B

Thanks Dan. Yes, we verified that the characters were correct.

 

[Zyrus]

Here is a quick update.

We could not figure out what was different or what had changed from previous files we have gotten from this client. We have used Database files from them for some time now and have never had any real issues.

Our workaround was to use InDesign instead of Quark with SmartStream. We finally printed the job, which ended up days late.

I will update this thread again if we ever figure it out. Thanks so much guys. It really helped to talk it out.

 

[DCurry]

I went to HP's training class for SS and the differences between the Quark and InDesign versions are staggering. There are many things that work differently from one app to the other. HP really needs to get on the ball and make them as identical as possible.

 

[Bo3b]

possibly something to do with excel on the Mac - there's definitely something wrong with excel 2008 on the Mac - I exported a csv file from excel (as had several customers of ours) and excel would use semi-colons ; instead of commas. I ended up using NeoOffice to export the file - no problems then.

 

[Tim-Ellis]

Hello,

This is a really old thread but I have some advice for anyone in the same pickle.

We had the same issue with PC text files being different from Mac text files. Usually it's anything outside the traditional ASCII values (like Euro Symbols). Encoded Barcodes can often feature such characters.

We found that TEXT WRANGLER allows you to open PC text files, edit them and save them back in PC format on your Mac. It will warn you if there are any issues it cannot handle so it has never given us any nasty suprises.

(SmartStream InDesign and SmartStream Quark are almost totally different products. Ten years on and we are still stuck with Quark because InDesign wont do things we need it to do)

 

[DCurry]

Now I'm curious - what does SS do in Q that it doesn't do in ID? I ask because I use SS extensively, but only with ID.

 

[Tim-Ellis]

Hello Dan,

Don't get too excited. I don't think there are any exciting features that you are missing out on. InDesign does all the cool stuff that the Quark version won't support.

I guess it's a question of different "bugs".


1) InDesign will not accept a header field that is empty.

Quark is less fussy.

(The work around is to edit your DH Header so that every field is populated with a name. After that, every DB Report you import or load on press will be ok 'unedited' aslong as the structure is the same



2) InDesign used a little Unicode inside Fast JLYT Templates. This stops them loading into Series 1 presses.


3) Quark allows you to add Variable Data text boxes outside the printing area. We place all the job details for the DB file outside the tick marks

InDesign will let you do this if you export to PDF but not as a Fast JLYT Templates.

(If anyone knows a way around that one, I'd love to hear from you)

 

[DCurry]

Good to know - thanks!

 

[Tim-Ellis]

...


3) Quark allows you to add Variable Data text boxes outside the printing area. We place all the job details for the DB file outside the tick marks

InDesign will let you do this if you export to PDF but not as a Fast JLYT Templates.

(If anyone knows a way around that one, I'd love to hear from you)

Hello Anyone who is interested...

It can be done. I had a sheet counter in the same text box as the variable data. This is what throws up an error message. HP tell me:

If you create two different channels, one next to the other; one for the Sheet Counter, and the other for the other fields then the Fast Template works and you get both the file info and sheet counter. They just can’t exist in the same channel in InDesign.