will be (by using ; as separator
pueblo funky;"He said ""How are you?""";"Here is a ; separator."
Sometimes erroneous a separator will be called delimiter - but that is not the same. A separator "separates" the values. A delimiter encloses the value at the beginning and at the end.
Also all trailing separators could be removed before output.
e.g.
a,"b, ",123, a value,,,,
=\>
a,"b, ",123, a value
Empty values - nothing between separators or nothing inside between double quotes - should be interpreted as NULL values (as for databases).
It is also important that CSV does NOT define data types!
When you write a date in the format "YYYY-MM-DD" - MS Excel detects this date format but converts it into the regional date format - which might be "DD.MM.YYYY" for Germany. When you write back the CSV file you destroy the file because "DD.MM.YYYY" will be written!
There is also a problem with the decimal point. MS Excel does not detect the decimal point (a comma "," or a point "."). There might be a auto-detection but it doesn't work if you using some values with or without a comma.
These should be all options how to write/read a CSV file. Do not take the regional settings for reading/writing - it the depends on the destination application how to read the file. That's not always Excel!
And note:
MS Excel however always writes the character set "iso-8859-1" and can only read this ...
**EXCEPT** :
The best is you are using the so called - "Unicode Text" under MS EXCEL.
This is:
Character encoding: UTF-16LE-BOM (Little Endian with BOM header ("FF FE"))
Separator character: Tabulator
Quoting character: Double Quote
File extension: .csv
Normally when you click "Save As" under MS EXCEL the file extension ".txt" will be used - but that is shit because when you double click on this file the editor (e.g. notepad) opens the file (and all looks destroyed).
The file extension ".csv" is the best. MS EXCEL has an auto-detection and opens the file correctly.
**The values above is the only one solution + combination which works in MS EXCEL (- tested with 2003).**
It's also important that the date format is the ISO date format: YYYY-MM-DD.
For the decimal character the decimal point "." should be used - but has to be tested - don't know it yet exactly what happens.
And the big advantage is also that ANY Unicode character can be used.
This works worldwide and is the best solution for Florian - no own options for a "csv" are required.
I hope this helps how too ...
ROBERT
PS: Don't forget ID3 for WAV 😉
PSS: There is also a RFC for TSV (tab separated values but this specification does not allow the tab inside the values - and .tsv is nothing used anywhere).
---
### Author:  [@krzysztof](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/krzysztof)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2018, 8:32pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/csv-export-fails-on-value-containing-semicolon/9066/9 "2018-05-19T20:32:33Z")
Re. Export to CSV:
Is anyone going to fix the issue of texts containing the semicolon?
I would suggest surrounding values with the ; with a quotation mark ("), which IIRC will make the csv open correctly in Excel :
a;"b;";123,a value
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### Author:  [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2018, 9:24am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/csv-export-fails-on-value-containing-semicolon/9066/10 "2018-05-20T09:24:18Z")
Can you just change the template to surround any placeholders by double quotation marks then?
Example: `"%title%";"%artist%";"%album%"` instead of `%title%;%artist%;%album%`
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### Author:  [@chrisjj](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/chrisjj)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2018, 9:39am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/csv-export-fails-on-value-containing-semicolon/9066/11 "2018-05-20T09:39:53Z")
I believe that can fail if any value contains a double quote.
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2018, 10:47am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/csv-export-fails-on-value-containing-semicolon/9066/12 "2018-05-20T10:47:47Z")
It does not completely fail:
It keeps the columns in one piece (as opposed to the plain semicolon that leads to an extra column)
But the double quotes move somehow:
original Title: The Return "of" Babel
exported data: The Return of" Babel"
The best way to export to csv files would still be to insert $char(9) as field separator.
`%title%$char(9)%artist%$char(9)%album%
exported data now: The Return "of" Babel
---
### Author:  [@chrisjj](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/chrisjj)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2018, 11:25am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/csv-export-fails-on-value-containing-semicolon/9066/13 "2018-05-20T11:25:40Z")
> It does not completely fail
It can completely fail to preserve the value.
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2018, 12:04pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/csv-export-fails-on-value-containing-semicolon/9066/14 "2018-05-20T12:04:13Z")
Ah, this reminds me of the unsyncedlyrics field - this also has to be taken care of if it contains linebreaks which will probably be interpreted as "end of record".
So while the user takes care of this field, he could also make sure that the chosen separator is actually a unique one.
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### Author:  [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2018, 10:41am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/csv-export-fails-on-value-containing-semicolon/9066/15 "2018-05-22T10:41:20Z")
Using `$char(9)`, as @ohrenkino suggested, really seems the way to go there. It represents the TAB character and is very unlikely to be used in any tag field.
Any objections to using this as the separator in the default CSV export configuration?
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2018, 10:57am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/csv-export-fails-on-value-containing-semicolon/9066/16 "2018-05-22T10:57:18Z")
I would suggest to issue 2 csv-exports:
one for Excel with $char(9) as separator
and another one with the semicolon - because:
if you use the result of the $char(9) csv-export, it will be tricky to re-import that data back into MP3tag with the function Convert\>Text file-Tag as you cannot enter the tab character in the input box for the field pattern.
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### Author:  [@chrisjj](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/chrisjj)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2018, 11:36am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/csv-export-fails-on-value-containing-semicolon/9066/17 "2018-05-22T11:36:01Z")
I would prefer a solution that worked for all characters. I don't want an in-value separator character messing up the import.
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2018, 11:53am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/csv-export-fails-on-value-containing-semicolon/9066/18 "2018-05-22T11:53:31Z")
I just imported data generated by the csv-export with this as exported fields:
`%title%;%artist%;%album%;%track%;%year%;%_length_seconds%;%_file_size%;%_file_mod_date%;%_folderpath%;%_filename_ext%;`
and the data in TITLE
Out the Blue "Xilent Remix"
and the exact same data was imported into Excel 2016.
I had to use the import assistant, though.
So could it be that this is mainly a problem of the target application?
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### Author:  [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 12:21pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/csv-export-fails-on-value-containing-semicolon/9066/19 "2026-02-09T12:21:50Z")