On opening
Everything ends up in one column
What happens. Balise did not recognize the character separating columns. This is common with files exported in French, which use semicolons rather than commas.
Your data is not affected. The file on disk is intact; only its on-screen reading is wrong.
What to do. Open the inspector and correct the delimiter in the dialect section. The grid reorganizes immediately.
Accents appear as strange characters
What happens. The detected encoding does not match the file. An older file might use ISO Latin-1 while Balise assumed UTF-8.
Your data is not affected. The file’s bytes have not changed.
What to do. Correct the encoding in the inspector. If the file needs to work elsewhere, create a UTF-8 copy with Convert a copy, described in Formats and conversions.
The file opens read-only with a partial preview message
What happens. The file exceeds the size Balise loads in full. It displays a representative beginning rather than pretending to hold everything.
Your data is not affected. Nothing is truncated on disk.
What to do. You can read and explore. To edit, export a segment or copy, work on it, then replace the original yourself.
A companion file is reported as invalid
What happens. The small file storing column widths no longer matches the CSV content or is damaged.
Your data is not affected. That file contains only display preferences.
What to do. Nothing is required: Balise ignores it and opens the CSV normally. The inspector offers to recreate or reattach it.
While working
Diagnostics appear and I do not know how serious they are
What happens. The inspector separates errors, warnings and observations. An observation, such as a nearly empty column or duplicate rows, describes your file without treating it as faulty.
Your data is not affected. A diagnostic changes nothing.
What to do. Address errors first. When a diagnostic has a position, a button takes you to the affected row.
A leading zero disappeared or a code became a date
What happens. Balise keeps every cell as text unless you request otherwise, so this change did not originate there. The file probably arrived damaged, transformed by the tool that produced it.
Your data may be affected, and the loss occurred before Balise.
What to do. Compare with the original source if available. For the next step, deliver TSV or ask your correspondent to export without automatic conversion.
I do not want the proposed repair
What happens. Balise proposes a correction without imposing it. The preview shows the before and after formats, each difference, its reason and severity.
Your data is not affected. Closing the preview changes neither the session, the file nor the disk.
What to do. Close the preview and correct the grid manually. All transformations in the Data menu can be undone.
On saving
If Balise refuses to write, see When saving is refused.