Question

I would like to import a CSV into Org-mode. Others have already asked about importing CSV to Org-mode tables. That’s not what I am trying to do. I need to import CSV to Org-mode properties.

For example, a CSV like this:

Name,Tel,Mobile,Fax
John,11111,22222,33333

should become:

:PROPERTIES:
:Name: John
:Tel: 11111
:Mobile: 22222
:Fax: 33333
:END:

Do you happen to know a painless way to do it?

Answer 1

The easiest approach I can see is to mark the data rows as the region, and then use a regexp search and replace:

M-x replace-regexp RET \(.*\),\(.*\),\(.*\),\(.*\) RET :PROPERTIES: C-q C-j :Name: \1 C-q C-j :Tel: \2 C-q C-j :Mobile: \3 C-q C-j :Fax: \4 C-q C-j :END: RET

If you needed to do this for many variable CSV files with different headers and numbers of columns, then I would probably approach it with keyboard macros.

user310031’s answer would make a good basis for that. The macro could narrow the buffer to each row, insert the header row above it, perform the csv-transpose (which appears to require CSV mode) do the search+replace, add in the :PROPERTIES: and :END: lines, widen the buffer again, and leave point on the line before the next data row. Then just mark the remaining data rows as the region, and type C-x C-k r.