File Too Big to Open?

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Level 4

1,282 points

File Too Big to Open?

I have a ~26 MB CSV file, which I had wanted to open in Numbers 09. But when I did, Numbers displayed the Opening dialog box, and then said that the file can't be opened because it was too big. How can I work around this and open the CSV file?

iMac 2.66 GHz standard configuration (April 2008), iPod Touch 1st Gen OS 3.1.2, Mac OS X (10.6.2), D-link DIR-625 router, iLife 09, iWork 09, XCode 3.2.1 (64-bit)

Posted on Jan 3, 2010 5:23 PM

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Answer 1

Barry

Level 9

60,023 points

Jan 3, 2010 9:52 PM in response to musicwind95

CSV is a text file, so if it's a spreadsheet, it likely exceeds the 64K row limit for a Numbers table.

You might be able to open the file in TextEdit, then split it into smaller pieces which you will be able to open.

Or it may be possible to open the file using either NeoOffice or OpenOffice.org, both of which can be downloaded from their respective websites (linked to the names in this line).

Make a copy of the file to try these with.

Regards,
Barry

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Answer 2

musicwind95 Author

Level 4

1,282 points

Jan 4, 2010 3:18 PM in response to Barry

How would I split it in TextEdit? As in, where would I split it? Would splitting it damage the file?

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Answer 3

Badunit

Level 7

30,708 points

Jan 4, 2010 5:53 PM in response to musicwind95

Splitting it will not damage the file because you are going to save each piece separately, not overwrite your original file. The CSV file will have one line of text per row. However, TextEdit will wrap long lines on the screen so you'll have to determine which lines are the ends of the rows. If you don't have many columns you may be able to make the window large enough to fit entire rows. Copy a section, paste it into another Textedit window, save as plain text with a CSV extension.

Note that if you have more than 255 (or is it 256) columns of data in your CSV data, that will be more than Numbers can handle.

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