Coda not always reading CSV file correctly

1

Hi all,

I am uploading a CSV file onto Coda, but Coda doesn’t appear to be reading the data correctly.

In my CSV file, several columns are made up of strings with commas that separate different choices, because I want this to show up as a multiple list column in Coda. For example, for a variable called “Program Implementer”, one entry might read:

“Government, NGO, Donor, Private, Other”

When uploading to Coda, this shows up correctly as a multiple list column, as per the below screenshot:
image

This works also when there is missing data for one of the options – for instance, when my .csv column reads “, , Government”, the Coda column reads “Government”.

However, this doesn’t always happen correctly. There are other variables where Coda does not automatically pick up on the comma separations and gets the fields wrong. For example, another column in my dataset has the options “Mixed”, “Rural”, and “Urban”, such that one entry might read “, , Mixed”. Instead of only saying “Mixed”, Coda in this case will say:

image

And if I look at Coda’s multiple list options for this column, I see the following:
image

Why is Coda reading some of my .csv columns incorrectly? Thanks for any advice anyone might be able to provide!

2

Dear @David_Alzate,

I would recommend to take care that the data you import meets the conditions is described here:

Yes, the Codans have been doing their best to make the interface as intelligent as possible, but sometimes the “guessing” goes wrong, because…not all variations can be predicted so the outcome will always be correct.

3

Dear @Jean_Pierre_Traets ,

Thanks for the reply! I’ve made sure that the .csv file is well formatted (it is the resulting output of a Stata database). The interesting thing is that the issue arises only with some columns of the data, but not others, even though they are formatted in the same identical way.

I’ve tried re-uploading the data in multiple ways (copying/pasting; changing the order of rows and columns; etc.) but the issue doesn’t seem to go away.

I am wondering if there is anyone else who has encountered this issue? I am tagging @Al_Chen_Coda , who I see is not only a Coda but an Excel expert as well.

Best,
David

4

I haven’t uploaded many CSVs to Coda to be honest. This is just my opinion, but I would first do the CSV data cleaning in Excel or OpenRefine before uploading into Coda.