Importing & Exporting Labels with Mac OS
Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2016 5:19 am
I am unable to use Microsoft Word 2011 on the Mac to edit Label files. According to the manual
(http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/impo ... abels.html) label files can be imported or exported as long as they are simple text files. The above page of the manual has a note about how to do it in Windows, "If you use a Windows application to create the file, you may have to use "Save As" and look for a specific option that saves with UTF-8 encoding."
I can find no note about how to do it on a Mac. Although Mac also has options including "UTF-8", I have had no success despite trying every option I can find. I notice that the label file exported has no extension, and that when you try to open it in Word
1) It presents you with a "Convert File From:" dialog (see first attachment). This also happens when you add the .txt extension before trying to open it
2) If you then open it with the Text Only option, you get these strange characters appearing in place of things like apostrophes and dashes. See the second attachment. Other options produce similar strange characters or don't work at all for importing the file to Word
3) If you then try to edit the file in Word and save it, you sometimes get a warning about saving it in the txt format because you might lose info. When you do save it, strange characters appear when it's re-opened, as int attachment 3
You might ask, why would I want to open a label file in Word? The answer is that I have dozens and dozens of audacity files with labels that need editing to change capitalization, remove spaces, etc... These tasks are easily automated in Word, but if you only use a simple text editor, you have to type in everything by hand. Each file has many labels and many of the labels are quite long (I'm editing audio books an using the label track to produce mp3 files of each section in each chapter, and when these files were originally made the section headings were copied and pasted into the labels)
I've attached the label file I used in making the above screenshots as a zip file
Conclusion: It seems to me that the file format used for the label track import/export is not Mac friendly.
Thanks for any help!
(http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/impo ... abels.html) label files can be imported or exported as long as they are simple text files. The above page of the manual has a note about how to do it in Windows, "If you use a Windows application to create the file, you may have to use "Save As" and look for a specific option that saves with UTF-8 encoding."
I can find no note about how to do it on a Mac. Although Mac also has options including "UTF-8", I have had no success despite trying every option I can find. I notice that the label file exported has no extension, and that when you try to open it in Word
1) It presents you with a "Convert File From:" dialog (see first attachment). This also happens when you add the .txt extension before trying to open it
2) If you then open it with the Text Only option, you get these strange characters appearing in place of things like apostrophes and dashes. See the second attachment. Other options produce similar strange characters or don't work at all for importing the file to Word
3) If you then try to edit the file in Word and save it, you sometimes get a warning about saving it in the txt format because you might lose info. When you do save it, strange characters appear when it's re-opened, as int attachment 3
You might ask, why would I want to open a label file in Word? The answer is that I have dozens and dozens of audacity files with labels that need editing to change capitalization, remove spaces, etc... These tasks are easily automated in Word, but if you only use a simple text editor, you have to type in everything by hand. Each file has many labels and many of the labels are quite long (I'm editing audio books an using the label track to produce mp3 files of each section in each chapter, and when these files were originally made the section headings were copied and pasted into the labels)
I've attached the label file I used in making the above screenshots as a zip file
Conclusion: It seems to me that the file format used for the label track import/export is not Mac friendly.
Thanks for any help!