I have a .txt file that is tab delimited UTF-8.

When exported and opened in Excel and modified, it changes the doc to a UTF-16.

Even after opening in Wrangler (strictly used for conversion from 16 to 8) and converting to a UTF-8 again, Excel is putting garbage into the file causing issues importing it back into the documents.

I know that FileMaker Pro will support 256 million FIELDS, but only support 99 columns when viewed in a spreadsheet format, which does not allow us to see all fields.

My database as it stand contains roughly 800 populated fields from left to right.

I’ve also tried Xtabulator, which is a Mac database, however when I import it, it’s recognizing our sizes (24”x24”) and stopping at the first “ mark because tab is designated as beginning and ending of a field with quote marks, and is reading our sizes as the end of the field. We do have “ as a qualifier to disregard it, but it still is not working.

The only reason I need/want to access the database in a spreadsheet format (like excel), is so we can compare families of products, and make changes across the board with click and drag or copy/paste then open the associated Adobe InDesign docs and “update” them to pull from the database. This format will also allow us to see if pages are tagged incorrectly, and make changes in the database instead of opening the indd doc and doing so manually.

I know that this cannot be the only database that uses hundreds of columns, so I know there has to be a solution.

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!