Language support
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When geting a list from a table in Excel (with headers), Foxtrot has issues in identifying the exact column I want to process because of the header column name that contains language-specific characters (Romanian in this case). For example, when importing a table with a column named "Referință” and then trying to query the list based on this column, I'm always getting an error that Foxtrot couldn't find the column I'm interested in. I can solve this by manually re-selecting the same column in the query action but this only works until I close the script. When re-opening the script, I get the same issue.
Ideas on how I can overcome this? The only solution I found so far was creating a Find & Replace action at the begining of the script to replace ă with a. Is this the only way?
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Hi Anca,
at this moment the list of characters that Foxtrot supports is limited. It requires implementing Unicode character support into Foxtrot to be able to send those letters. This is already captured by the development team as an enhancement request and hopefully will be implemented soon. You can see the letters that Foxtrot is currently supporting in Keyboard (extended)
However it should work with Excel - it should recognize the characters in Excel and get them correctly into Foxtrot. At least this is how it works for me. I think it depends on your Excel settings.
When you get the list, is it shown in Foxtrot with the correct header? But the Query doesn't work? Or it gets the value incorrectly into a list? If you could send some screenshots - that would be great :) -
Hi and thanks for the answer,
This is the Excel I'm working with (I'm interested in for example, column F):
This is how Foxtrot gets the list (it works correctly as far as I can tell):
I have to manipulate the list in several ways (rename columns, insert new ones, query etc). If dependent on column Referinta, no matter the action I get the same error - The specified column does not exist. This is where I edit the action, re-select the same column that triggered the error and it works until I'll close the script and re-open it again.
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Hi Anca,
I tested it a little and even if it gets the data correctly, after saving and reopening the project - the characters will be changed. So what you can try to do is to change your system locale to Romanian (if that's not done yet) and see if that helps Foxtrot recognize the characters:
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Hi Anca,
Just an input to the conversation. As @Tatyana already mentioned, it is reported to the development team that some special characters does cause issues for Foxtrot. In the meantime, I would recommend that you perform either "search and replace" in Excel using the "Replace" action in Foxtrot, or after loading in the list you should be able to perform "Format List Column" to make sure to remove any unwanted characters. I've tried to make a short video with an example here:
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Hi Anca,
unfortunately, because Foxtrot doesn't support Unicode, after saving/reopening the letters will be changed. A workaround at the moment could be to keep these special characters in an external file (Excel). So when you need to use Replace - you open the file, get the values to a variable and then use Replace. Does it make sense? -
Hi Anca,
I just want to post the solution here so that other people could benefit from it :)
For cases when Foxtrot doesn't support special characters the solution is to save those characters in an external file (Excel would the best option as it supports Unicode), then use Foxtrot to open the file and get the characters to a variable/list to be able to replace them. Please note, that keeping the list of special characters inside Foxtrot will not work in this case, as it will break after the script is re-open.PS the issue Anca had was because those two letters were different in two lists, so copy/paste solved the problem
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