Problem description: Currently it is not possible to set the file or text delimiter when converting a .ods file to .csv using 'soffice –headless' on the command line. The current default file delimiter is a comma. Comma is a common punctuation mark and therefor as file delimiter nearly useless when doing some computation after file conversion to csv with external tools (line length will variate if the input .ods file includes a cell with a comma). In OpenOffice there is be pretty complicated way to set the delimiter on the command line, so I guess the feature exists in LO too, but is currently not exposed to the user: http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/DevGuide/Spreadsheets/Filter_Options Design suggestion how to implement the delimiter feature: Add three new commands to the command line interface. --calc-delimiter-file Sets the calc file delimiter --calc-delimiter-text Sets the calc text delimiter --printstd Prints the output of any command to std out -> Would allow to process the output further with other tools. I've filled a unoconv bug too: https://github.com/dagwieers/unoconv/issues/161 Plus, please update the command line help text to include some more information, some examples and links to web resources. Operating System: Ubuntu Version: 4.0.2.2 release
I can confirm this bug. Setting status to NEW and Severity to enhancement. Currently it is not possible under Crunchbang 11 running TDF/LO v4.1.0.4 to set the delimiter of the CSV file to be exported.
As I answered here: http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/21916/cli-convert-ods-to-csv-with-semicolon-as-delimiter/?answer=46463#post-id-46463 There is a way to set delimiter: soffice --headless --convert-to csv:"Text - txt - csv (StarCalc)":"59,ANSI,1" test.ods There is also a way to set text delimiter, got it from this openoffice forum thread: https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=75404 It should look like this, but I didn't test it: soffice --headless --convert-to csv:"Text - txt - csv (StarCalc)":"59,34,ANSI,1" test.ods You should test it and report if it works. Problem is, there is no documentation of any kind for this.
Beleive this was also resolved by Tomas Hlavaty's work on bug 36313 - CLI: Encoding issue when Converting documents: esp. UTF-8 in headless mode http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=45ba4d79d968f81f74ef0c4588fd15b1ce91153f Documentation for CLI needs attention -- bug 89739