Applies To:
  • CitectSCADA 1.00, 1.01, 1.10, 1.11, 1.20, 2.00, 2.01
Summary:
Using Microsoft Excel with foreign character sets may introduce incompatibility with Citect database functions. The character set that first produced the problem was Chinese, and other double byte character sets (DBCS) may do the same. European languages (using the standard windows single byte character set) seem to be OK.

If you use Excel to create or modify dBase (.DBF) database files, it does not save the characters correctly. If you later try to use another package, such as Citect, Q+E database editor, etc, to read from the database, garbage characters are returned. The only package that will be able to access the database correctly thereafter will be Excel.

Note, however, that using Excel with Chinese characters on its own worksheet format (.XLS) is quite OK. 

Solution:
If you wish to create or modify dBase files with Chinese characters, use the Citect Database Editor, the Citect Cicode function DevSetField(), or the Q+E database editor supplied with Microsoft Excel. There may be other packages that will also work.

We are researching this problem and will post new information here as it becomes available. 
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