line breaks in javascript generated csv for excel import

Question

I generate and download a CSV from a webpage using javascript in the browser side (chrome windows)

function toCsv(arr){
    return arr.reduce(function(csvString, row){
        csvString += row.join(',') ;
    csvString += "\r\n";  //";";//"\n";
        return csvString;
    }, '');
}

function flowDataCsv(){
    document.location = 'data:Application/octet-stream,' + toCsv(flowDataGrid);
}

i have tried delimiting lines with ";", "\r\n" and "\n" but all three results in csv:s that excel imports into one line instead of as a grid. How should i terminate the lines to get excel to recognize it as a line ending and start inserting data on a new line?

Answer 1

Not sure if you still need the answer to this question. But will post the solution I found as I experienced the same problem.

Using your code above the only thing you are missing is to encode your csv string returned by your toCsv function. This would look like this in your code above:

function toCsv(arr){
    return arr.reduce(function(csvString, row){
        csvString += row.join(',') ;
    csvString += "\r\n";  //";";//"\n";
        return encodeURIComponent(csvString);
    }, '');
}

function flowDataCsv(){
    document.location = 'data:Application/octet-stream,' + toCsv(flowDataGrid);
}

Hopefully this helps anyone who comes across this issue again in the future!

Answer 2

Try \u2028 instead of \n or \u2029 in place of \r.

src: https://github.com/zemirco/json2csv/issues/91#issuecomment-276555551