Hi Margaret, Thanks for the tip! I ended up using Brian’s trick on saving the file as a UTF-8 CSV file, but this will come in handy in the future. Best, Sarah
Sarah H. Shepherd (she/her/hers) Archivist Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library 33 Marrett Road | Lexington, MA 02421 Phone: 781-457-4129 | Email: [email protected] From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Margaret Kidd Sent: Friday, May 5, 2023 10:13 AM To: Archivesspace Users Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] [External] Auto formatting with dates on Accession CSV import template CAUTION: This email originated outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Hi, Another trick for getting rid of UTF-8 errors is to use the CLEAN function in Excel<https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/clean-function-26f3d7c5-475f-4a9c-90e5-4b8ba987ba41>. It takes a little extra work but is worth it when you can't find the one character causing the problems. Best, Margaret ________________________________ Margaret Turman Kidd Access and Electronic Records Archivist, Special Collections & Archives VCU Libraries | Health Sciences Library Virginia Commonwealth University 509 N. 12th Street / Box 980582, Richmond, VA 23298-0582 (804) 828-3152 [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Pronouns: she/her On Thu, May 4, 2023 at 4:40 PM Brian Harrington <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hi Sarah, I think that what you’re seeing is Excel reformatting the date when you reopen the CSV file. CSV doesn’t store dates the same way that Excel does. So if you set the format so that date shows as 2023-05-04 it will be saved that way in the CSV. (You can open it in a text editor and check.) But the next time you open the CSV in Excel, Excel will cheerfully convert any dates that it finds (and sometimes other things) into Excel formatted dates. So the key is to not reopen the file after you save as CSV. The UTF-8 errors you’re seeing are something completely different. There are two ways to get around them. The first is to save from Excel with the file type set to CSV UTF-8 rather than regular CSV. The second is to look non-UTF-8 characters in your CSV and change them. These are usually curly quotes and em-dashes. I hope this helps. Brian -- Brian Harrington (he/him) Data Migration Specialist LYRASIS [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> on behalf of Sarah Shepherd <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Thursday, May 4, 2023 at 3:19 PM To: Archivesspace Users Group <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] [External] Auto formatting with dates on Accession CSV import template Hi Bri, Thanks for the advice! I wish I had seen this video earlier. Unfortunately, I am passed that stage and understand the issues with the formatting and dates, the csv file is just not letting me reformat the dates. It keeps reverting automatically to the date format when I switch it to the text or general format. It’s a never-ending circle! I’ll keep fiddling with it. Best, Sarah Sarah H. Shepherd (she/her/hers) Archivist Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library 33 Marrett Road | Lexington, MA 02421 Phone: 781-457-4129 | Email: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of McLaughlin, Brianna Jean Sent: Tuesday, May 2, 2023 11:18 AM To: Archivesspace Users Group <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] [External] Auto formatting with dates on Accession CSV import template CAUTION: This email originated outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Hi Sarah, I think you may be encountering similar issues that I ran into with the accession csv template. I don’t have the process I used written out in a way that’s decipherable by anyone but me, but my colleague, Jeremy, and I talked about the errors I ran into with dates during this year’s ArchivesSpace Member Forum. The Youtube video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRAUu58-Lgs&t=980s. The information between 11:46-18:23 is probably most relevant to you. It feels weird to direct you to my own presentation, but I hope it’s helpful! Feel free to follow up with me if you have questions. Bri McLaughlin, she/her/hers Digital Collections Librarian Indiana University 812-856-3321 From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of Sarah Shepherd Sent: Tuesday, May 2, 2023 9:10 AM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [External] [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Auto formatting with dates on Accession CSV import template You don't often get email from [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. Learn why this is important<https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification> This message was sent from a non-IU address. Please exercise caution when clicking links or opening attachments from external sources. Hello, I’m having some difficulty with the Accession CSV template autoformatting my dates into the incorrect format for ArchivesSpace. It is only a problem with a single date. For example, I will put in 1920-04-29 which is the proper ArchivesSpace format for date_1_begin. The Accession CSV template then autocorrects it to be 4/29/1920 turning the cell format into a Date format instead of the standard General format. When I switch the cell format back to General it turns the number into 7425. When I put the correct date (1920-04-29) back in, it again auto formats the cell to a Date format, so it goes back to 4/29/1920. Bizarrely, it does not do the same for another record which has 1865-11-27 as date_1_begin. I tried to look up how to stop this auto formatting but have not found anything. I even tried setting the date format to English (South Africa) which has a date format of 1920-04-29, but when I save the document, it got rid of all the formatting and reverts to 4/29/1920. I have tried importing the template without saving so that it keeps the 1920-04-29 date format (set to the English (South Africa)) and it gives an error (#<ArgumentError: invalid byte sequence in UTF-8>) which I saw on a different post meant that there is incorrect formatting on the template. It goes without saying that when I tried to import the template with the date as 4/29/1920, it also did not work (though interestingly, returning the same error (#<ArgumentError: invalid byte sequence in UTF-8>) instead of an incorrect date error). In another weird twist, the template does not get the (#<ArgumentError: invalid byte sequence in UTF-8>) when accession_accession_date autoformats its cell to date and ArchivesSpace can also deal with the import just fine with the incorrect date format of 3/29/2023 turning it into 2023/03/29 in the record in ArchivesSpace. Why the difference? That was a lot of information, but as you can see, I’ve done some troubleshooting to try to figure out the issue and have only become more confused! Has anyone else run into this issue with single dates? Are there any work arounds besides giving up on single dates when importing? Grateful for any help, Sarah Sarah H. Shepherd (she/her/hers) Archivist Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library 33 Marrett Road | Lexington, MA 02421 Phone: 781-457-4129 | Email: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> _______________________________________________ Archivesspace_Users_Group mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://lyralists.lyrasis.org/mailman/listinfo/archivesspace_users_group
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