Interactive Report - Download as csv

Question

Hi,
I am using apex 4.0.2.00.07 on IE8 with theme Traditional Blue. I have a problem with the inbuild download functionality of an interactive report. One field is of type varchar2 and I allow line breaks in the underlying edit screen.
I simply do not find a way to handle this formatting in the export to csv. The data is always completely shredded. An example:
Input form:
Name (text field):
Bob
Address (text area):
Street(<linebreak>)
City
IReport SQL: select NAME, ADDRESS from USERS
In the IR form it will show as
Name || Address
Bob || Street City
An export to csv will make this to
Name,"Address"
Bob,"Street
City"
I have tried all settings of the report attribute 'Display Type' for field Address, but it will always be the same in the IR and always the same in the export. How do I ensure that the whole content of a table field is displayed as one value in the csv, with no regards to potentially present field formatting, e.g. in my case:
Name,"Address"
Bob,"Street City"
And if we are already at it: I have seen that some plugins for an export to excel exist. Would that recognise the formatted text and place it in one cell or would I face the same issue here, i.e. the field value being split over several cells?
Thanks a lot,
Martin

Answer 1

Well, found some answers after some more trial and error.
1.) Country settings messed up my csv format. After changing the default column separator in the report attributes, things now look as expected.
2.) One can rather easily suppress the format signs by using the sql replace functionality, e.g.
SELECT REPLACE (my_column, CHR(10),' ') FROM my_table
And it is actually quite a difference if you use text area or rich text fields when it comes to the usage of the breaks.
Cheers,
Martin