Field entries in primary and secondary files are governed by various rules. The following table lists other entries and their accompanying rules. Rules for formatting addresses delimited by semicolons are provided in the next section.
| Entry | Rule |
|---|---|
| # ! , \ " % . | Characters must be enclosed in quotation marks. The entire entry must be enclosed in quotation marks, not just the embedded character. |
| \ | Use two backslash characters in addition to quotation marks: "\\" |
| " | Use two quotes: "" |
| Delimiters | For multi-valued fields, such as
distribution list members or e-mail addresses, each value can be
quoted, but delimiters cannot be within quotes. In the following
example, the semicolon (;) delimiter is not inside quotes.
|
| Spaces | No extra spaces at the beginning of a line, or before or after field-delimiting commas, unless it is part of the data to be migrated. |
| End of line | Each line of data ends with a carriage
return and line feed.
Important The last line of each file must be an end of line character. |
| Blank lines | Must consist only of a carriage return and line feed. They will be ignored. |
| Comment lines | Begin with an exclamation point (!). Comment lines are useful for storing information, such as when the data was extracted and what parameters were set for extracting the data. |
| Continuation character | If your system supports a limited number of columns in a file, use a double backslash (\\), followed by a carriage return and line feed. It can be placed anywhere in a primary file, and it signals that the next line in the file must be appended to the current line. Line continuations will not work within comments, inside quotation marks, in directory sections of primary files, or in secondary files. |
| Code page | No default code page. Files can be in any code page supported by Microsoft Windows 2000 Server. There can be only one code page for each set of primary and secondary files. You must specify the code page on the first line of the packing list file. Unicode is not supported as a valid code page. |
| Case sensitivity | Header lines and parsing text are not case sensitive. |
| Dates, times, and durations | Represented by 14-digit numbers. First 4 digits = year, second 2 digits = month, third 2 digits = day, fourth 4 digits = time on a 24-hour clock, fifth 2 digits = seconds. For example, May 1, 1995, at 10:00:05 P.M. = 19950501220005. One year, 4 months, 3 days, 22 hours, and 2 seconds = 00010403220002. (Local times, not Greenwich mean time.) |
| Carriage returns without line feeds | Converts to carriage returns with line feeds. When you move the migration file from the source system to Microsoft Windows NT Server, the conversion is likely to add line feeds, which may be unacceptable. |
To use backslashes (\) in folder names, the following formatting rules apply:
Multi-valued fields that are delimited by semicolons such as X.400 addresses, distribution list members, or e-mail addresses must follow these formatting conventions:
Related Topics
Formatting the Migration Files