Limit number of csv columns imported

[ppatane]

We get an invoice from one of our vendors that is rather messy at times.  The 1st 47 columns are always correct with no problems, but sometimes there are 1-3 extra columns and that causes issues with the workflow.  If I uncheck *Unknown in the Select Tool and just have the first 47 columns checked, will that ignore extra columns if they're present?

[SPetrie]

You are correct. Unchecking that will automatically drop any new column that comes in that is not already listed in your select tool.

[ppatane]

Hmm, still getting an error of too many fields

[apathetichell · Accepted solution]

too many fields means that you have a conflict between the numer of fields in some rows vs the first row. That usually relates to too many (or too few delimiters) in one of the rows - which may relate to if you should be ignoring delimeters in quotes and are not.

[SPetrie]

Are you getting that error during the file import?

Thats different and a select by itself will not solve that issue.

Its more annoying, but you may try to import the CSV with no delimiters using \0 and no field names

Then use a text to columns and dynamic rename to finish the import.

I attached a basic example of that.

[ppatane]

The number of extra columns actually got as high as 6, so I added 6 extra delimiters on the title row of my default input file and in the Select tool, I unchecked those 6 extra columns..