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Selecting a Separator

There are three types of separators you can use with directory import and directory export: column, quote, and property. For descriptions, see "Selecting Separators and Character Sets" earlier in this chapter.

Quoting Behavior for Multivalued Properties

When you import or export multivalued properties, Microsoft Exchange Server quotes the entire multivalued property. Embedded, multivalued property separator characters are prefixed with a backslash (\) character. For example, a multivalued property with values "v,1", "v,2", and "v,3", is exported as:

"v,1%v,2%v,3"

A multivalued property with values "v%1", "v,2", and "v,3", is exported as:

"v\%1%v,2%v,3"

For example, the multivalued property of an exported proxy address might look like the following. The CUSTOM: proxy address (Black, Maria at \\SANFRANCISCO01) has an embedded comma and embedded backslashes. The comma is the default multivalued attibute separator, and the backslash is the literal character introducer. Because of the presence of embedded commas, the entire multivalued proxy addresses property is quoted, and each of the two embedded backslashes is introduced by a backslash character.

"CCMAIL:Black, Maria at California%CUSTOM:Black, Maria at \\\\SANFRANCISCO01%MS:FERGUSONBA/NAMERICA-W/MARIAB%SMTP:MariaB@ California.Ferguson&Bardell.com%X400:c=US;a= ;p=Ferguson ? Barde;o=California;s=Black;g=Maria;"

The following example shows the Members multivalued property of an exported distribution list, which shows the distinguished names of the members of the distribution list. Because there are no embedded special characters in the string (for example, commas and backslashes), the property is not quoted.

Recipients/cn=Letters/cn=marketing%Recipients/cn=Letters/cn=sales%
Recipients/cn=Letters/cn=Support
Using .Csv Files Generated by Microsoft Exchange Server Version 4.0
In Microsoft Exchange Server version 4.0, if a multivalued property contained embedded separators (for example, commas and tabs), the property values making up the multivalued property were quoted individually. If Microsoft Excel was then used to edit the exported data file, the quotes embedded in the multivalued property value string were not recognized, and the property would be incorrectly split across several Microsoft Excel cells.

Import files generated for use with Microsoft Exchange Server version 4.0 are compatible with Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.5, with the following exceptions:

  • If a quoted string is specified for a multivalued property, and the string contains one or more multivalued property separators, the string is split into multiple values unless the separator character is preceded by a backslash. Previous versions of Microsoft Exchange Server treated the string as a single value. Separator characters found in exported strings are preceded with the backslash, and are correctly handled on import. This behavior is unchanged from version 4.0, so data files exported with version 4.0 can be imported using version 5.5.
  • To minimize the number of cases where this new handling of multivalued properties causes problems in user-edited files, multivalued property separator characters in single-valued properties are now ignored. In version 4.0, the value was split at the multivalued property separator, and only the first portion was used. In most cases, this would not generate a warning.