If you are editing CSV files, it is important that you use a text editor to at least inspect the results of the edit.  In the event of problems using a CSV file modified in a third-party program (e.g. Excel), it becomes VITAL that you inspect the file in a text editor.
 
CSV files are text files, not Excel files.  Excel can make use of them, but there is no reason to expect it to maintain a presupposed file format.  In particular, there is no concept in a CSV file of a header row naming columns or a fixed number of "columns" per line.
 
In your case, here are the two rows at the position of the problem:
 
15,SARO-U,444.1,+,5,Tone,179.9,88.5,23,NN,FM,5,,,,,
16,SARO-U,444.125,+,5,Tone,179.9,88.5,23,NN,FM,5
As you can see, the line beginning with "15," which is the 16th line in the file, ends with a series of commas.  These separate the last 5 values in the line, which all happen to be empty.
 
The line beginning with "16," - and subsequent lines - are lacking these 5 commas and accordingly contain five fewer values per line.  Because CHIRP is expecting more values per line than you gave it, it doesn't know what to do, and hands the problem back to you with the "column number mismatch" error message.  (Certainly it would be nice if the error message was a bit more informative - e.g. by including the number of values expected and the number of values actually in the line - perhaps the programmers can improve the error message.)
 
When I look at the file from yesterday (from which you had removed column headings), there are no trailing commas in any of the lines.  I assume these were removed by Excel, but can't know for sure.
 
As a simple rule of thumb, only work on CSV files in the program that actually created them.  If you do this, you are unlikely to have problems with them.  As I understand it, the idea of CHIRP's CSV files is to allow you to copy entire sets of frequencies from one radio image to another, not to allow you to manipulate the frequency sets in third-party programs like Excel.  (Like all rules, this is, of course, meant to be broken ... but caveat emptor.)

Regards, Dave VK2FDJS
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Chris Nordstrom
To: chirp_users@intrepid.danplanet.com
Sent: Sunday, February 28, 2016 5:17 AM
Subject: Re: [chirp_users] Chirp won't read CSV files correctly

Dave,

Yup, success!  When I put 88.5 in the rToneFreq column (also used 67, I guess any valid tone freq) and deleted column headers from any column that contains no data and entered the correct number of rows in Memory Range---badda bing -- it works.


I also figured out that I cannot directly Upload a CSV file to the radio, it has to be an IMG file, which makes sense, but the method for getting an IMG file is not obvious and with no documentation (that I could find), eew!  So what I did was Download from the radio, delete all except the first row, save it as an "Empty" IMG file.  Next, I Open that IMG file then Import the CSV file containing the memory channel data I want, and magically, it becomes an IMG file that I can now Upload to the radio.  Is this how it is supposed to work or is there another way to do this?  Does it work basically the same regardless of the radio brand?

Attached is the CSV file that causes the Column number mismatch error.  The only difference between this file and the one that successfully imports is that there IS column heading text in columns M, N, O, P and Q, but there is no data in those columns.  When I removed the heading text from just those columns, the problem goes away.

Thanks for your encouragement and ideas,

Regards, Chris W7CFN
 
P.S.  Is there no one working on some basic documentation?  Perhaps I can contribute something, it's been pretty painful for me.

 
On 2/26/2016 10:43 PM, Dave VK2FDJS wrote:
I assume the file you attached was the one that gave you the second (smaller) set of errors.
 
If you look at it in Excel, you'll see that rows 33, 35 and 40 are the only rows that have nothing in the rToneFreq and cToneFreq columns.
 
There are two other rows that have nothing in the Tone column (rows 2 and 3), but these still have values in the other two columns.  Looks like you have to have a value of some sort in these two columns.
 
Could you please post the file that gave you the errors from row 17 on, so we can have a look at it too.

Regards, Dave VK2FDJS
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Chris Nordstrom
To: chirp_users@intrepid.danplanet.com
Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2016 4:15 PM
Subject: Re: [chirp_users] Chirp won't read CSV files correctly

This is the error I get when importing or opening my CSV file:

I'm using a file that was generated by Chirp using the export function, then (In Excel) I copy/paste my channels into that CSV file.  When opened in Chirp using either File/Open or File/Import, same errors every time.

So, a little experimentation and I discover that it doesn't like the empty columns to the right (where there is a column heading but nothing in the column).  So I deleted the column headers (that Chirp created!) for the columns with no data and voila, it got past that error.  Now I get this one:


The new error about line 33 "[rTone] could not convert string to float"  I generally get what this error means but don't get what exactly is causing it.  And why does it reference line 33 and only import up to memory channel 25?  I notice at the top of the memory list window is an item called "Memories Memory Range" where the default entries are 1 to 25.  Bingo!  I changed the top end to 39 and it imported all the rows in my CSV file.  Wow, I know, there is a disclaimer about how you guys are good at programming and not so much at documentation.  Not sure I agree with that  and the documentation part seems like a cop out. 

I can't say never, but rarely have I encountered a program so unintuitive and persnickity.  I know, I know, it's free, what do I want for nothing.  I guess I need to lower my expectations.  

Chris Nordstrom




 


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Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2015.0.6189 / Virus Database: 4537/11706 - Release Date: 02/27/16