Multimap logo Multimap Client Zone V2.2 Documentation - Specification of Comma- or Tab-separated Files

Multimap uses a CSV parser in Client Zone which adheres to this CSV specification:

  1. Permissible characters within a CSV field include 0x09 (the tab character) and the inclusive range of 0x20 (the space character) through to 0x7E (the tilde character). In binary mode all characters are accepted, at least in quoted fields.
  2. A CSV field may be surrounded by double quotes.
  3. If the contents of a field include a comma, the comma must be surrounded by its own pair of double quotes. Otherwise, it will be interpreted as a field separator.
  4. If the contents of a field include an embedded double quote, the embedded double quote must be surrounded by its own pair of double quotes. In binary mode you may additionally use the sequence "0 for representation of a NUL byte.
  5. A CSV string may be terminated by 0x0A (a line-feed character) or by 0x0D,0x0A (a carriage return followed by a line feed).

Please note that Multimap uses binary mode. The same specification applies to tab-delimited files as to comma-delimited files, except that the delimiter is a tab character instead of a comma.

Protecting Your Data Integrity

Preserving leading zero characters

We recommend that you do not import addresses into Excel spreadsheets from CSV files that contain numbers with leading zeros if you intend afterwards to upload the Excel file to Client Zone. This should prevent the loss of leading zeros when you save the Excel file to be uploaded.

Should you decide to export addresses from Excel to a CSV file that you intend to upload to Client Zone, you can minimize the possibility of losing the leading zeros by formatting the numbers as text before saving the data as a CSV file. This illustrates one way to format postal codes with zeros as text in Excel:

screenshot

Encoding

Multimap supports upload in Latin-1 or UTF-8 formats; it does not support Windows-1252 format. If you need to upload your data in any other format please contact the Multimap Customer Support team.

File size

Multimap recommends that you use CSV file download for any data files larger than around 10,000 records: the time required to prepare an Excel file of that size on Multimap's servers would be longer than the servers' standard request time-out period.

The maximum size of file that you can upload is set to 20 megabytes, by default. If you need to upload larger files than this, please contact the Multimap Customer Support team.

Back to Client Zone documentation page.

Further Help

If you require further help with your Multimap service implementation, additional Multimap services or general account enquiries, please contact Multimap:

Sales: +44 (0)20 7632 7800
Customer Support: +44 (0)20 7632 7777
email: mminform@microsoft.com