Write binary files

Hi,

I’d like to write a BASE64-encoded string BASE64-decoded to file, so ‘write binary’.
What I’ve done:

  • Got ‘column A’ with the BASE64-encoded string
  • Action ‘Calculate new columns’, with new column ‘column B’ and formula ‘decode(“base64”,[column a]’)
  • Action ‘Keep/remove columns’, with ‘Remove all columns but ‘column B’’
  • Action ‘Export to CSV’, with encoding ‘ASCII’ (Advanced Options)

Unfortunately, all encoding-types result in file where some characters are ‘mangled’.

Is there a possibility to really write binary files?

Thanks in advance,
Dethmer Kupers
DEQIT

Found a workaround, for Windows 10:

  • Use the action ‘Export into delimited textfile’ to write the BASE64-encoded string to a ASCII-file (eg c:\temp\temp.b64)
  • Call PowerShell (‘certutil -decode “{tempfile}” “{outputfile}”’) to decode the file.

Nevertheless, a ‘binary write’ wouldn’t hurt :wink:

Greetings,
Dethmer Kupers
DEQIT

1 Like

Hi Dethmer and welcome to the Community!

That's a nice trick! Thanks for sharing.