Bulk uploading of Google Apps accounts via CSV using Apple Numbers

I’m using Apple Numbers on a Mac with Croatian locale. This means CSV files not only don’t have a BOM (byte order mark) which Google Apps requires, but its CSV files are not actually comma-separated, but semicolon-separated. (Croats use decimal comma instead of decimal point, so any CSV files generated by spreadsheets can’t use commas. Weird, yep, my dear US reader.)

So… follow Google’s instructions in building the CSV file, and then process it with the following commands in Vim.

:set bomb
:%s/;/,/g
:wq

You’re welcome.


via blog.vucica.net

2 thoughts on “Bulk uploading of Google Apps accounts via CSV using Apple Numbers

  1. Ivan Kravarščan

    Fact that Croats use decimal comma instead of decimal point is debatable. Current Croatian orthography says we should use decimal comma but on the other hand every math and physics texbook uses decimal point. To worsen the issue, law on metrology regulates the use of the decimal coma. So who is right? Teachers (from elementary school to university professors) or the law?

    Reply
    1. Ivan Vučica Post author

      Windows, OS X and, well, POSIX locale settings all say we use commas. For programmers, unfortunately, that's the most important salient point. Especially when you figure out that a certain version of Opera (I think from 9.x series?) has, under Linux, used locale-specific interpretation of numbers when interpreting CSS. Thus breaking stuff like "1.1em" if the locale was set to "hr_HR.UTF-8".

      Similarly here. Excel, Numbers and probably OpenOffice.org too will use locale-specific interpretation of numbers with decimal fractions. In fact, I suspect that these programs are one of primary reasons why we have stuff like "Regional Settings" to specify not just date, but number formatting, too. Excel, Numbers and probably OpenOffice.org too all export locale-specific CSV. I'm not sure if any of them allows specifying encoding.

      Just a small remark on who is right. Historically we used decimal comma. I say culturally we use decimal comma. Only lately the foreign influence, as well as convenience of listing numbers separated by commas (2.5, 6.6, -1.425) has turned us towards using decimal point. After all — it's far more common to list numbers than to end a sentence with a number. It's also far less confusing to have a single extra point than multiple messy commas.

      Reply

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