Comparing xlsx files - Delimiter Detection Failed error

[bruccutler]

Hello,
I'm comparing two very large Excel 2010 spreadsheets.

I get the following error on both the left and right side.

Delimiter Detection Failed - MS Excel Workbooks Converted ANSI

What does this mean? How do I fix it?

It only appears to pull up a few rows and then stops.
- Bruce

[Aaron]

Hello,

How large are your Excel files. Roughly how many total rows/columns, and overall size of your file?
If you cut/paste the first few rows (several past where the error appears to occur) into a new Test file, are you able to reproduce the error with the smaller file?
Would it be possible to email a pair of sample files to [email protected]? If you do email us, please include a link back to this forum post.

From just the error text, there may be delimiter-like characters throughout your data and BC3 is having trouble parsing your file.
As a workaround, do your files display if you install and use the Text Compare variant for Excel files?
http://www.scootersoftware.com/downl...oreformats_alt

[yamo]

check for quotation marks?

When I received the delimiter detection failed error it was because of fields with a single quotation mark as in 'Hawks (short for Seahawks for example).

But I assume that there are several special characters which may cause this issue.

[Aaron]

Hello,

BC3 will use the current installation of Excel to perform the external conversion. Is the version of Excel installed on your machine Excel 2010?

If you launch Excel, open your files, how does it treat the 'Hawks text if you:
Save As CSV (*.csv)
Save As Unicode Text (*.txt)

[Joshua Collings]

Hi Aaron,

I am having the same problem with the error 'delimiter detection failed' it only finds 5 changes with in the document. I did a conversion to .csv and .txt both came up with dramaticly more changes. The information is so much harder to read this way... any other suggestions so i can view it as a data document?

hope this makes sense

kind regards joshua

[Chris]

Joshua, I just sent you an email about this, earlier this afternoon, but I'll post it here as well for anyone else following this thread.

The default settings in BC 3.2.4 and BC 3.3.0 beta display this error message if Excel files have very long lines. Changing your Beyond Compare settings should avoid this error.

In BC, select "Tools > File Formats".
Select the "MS Excel Workbooks" format.
Go to the "Conversion" tab.
Change the "characters per line limit" from 4096 to 65536.
Click Save, then Close.

This should allow you to open the files in the Data Compare without errors. Please let us know if it doesn't solve the problem.