Copying a cell that contains line returns adds quotations to the entire cell contents

frog learner

If I copy a cell that contains line returns to my clipboard, the contents of that cell are contained within quotations. This is problematic for my business since quotations are being unnecessarily added to the entire cell contents.

 

How do I prevent this from happening without removing the line returns?

Christian Wells

Hi Frog,

 

Line returns are a defininte identifier of a Text field.  If the Line returns were not enclosed in the quotations, the data may actually be interpreted as a new record/line for each line return.  The adding of the quotation to the entire cell contents therefore encapsulates that multipline text as 1 field of data and not multiple rows of data.

 

smartsheet possibly also stores the data like this for their own data storage and interpretation. Many programs do this to handle multiline text.

 

I dont think there will be an easy fix, I believe it will always export/cut/copy like that, therefore if you are importing htis to another system, then that system might need to remove the quotations on import.

You could manipulate the data in Excel after export (write a macro) or utilise the excel file 'save as' formats to save a file with out the quotations.

 

I believe that in any case the fields with line returns will always be in quotations so the row of data remains intact.