qgis 2 - Converting Excel into shapefile (keeping encoding and data type)

I am trying to create a "perfect" shapefile from the Excel data. "Perfect" means that it should match several factors: proper encoding and original data type.

Excel file basically contains information about point objects and includes five attributes with required types.

Attribute     |      Type       |      Description
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FFA_NR        |      integer    | Object serial number
FFA_TXT       |      text       | Object serial number but with leading zeros
Name          |      text       | Object name
X             |      real       | X-coordinate in Gauß-Krüger CS
Y             |      real       | Y-coordinate in Gauß-Krüger CS

where an X,Y-tuple is based on DHDN / 3-degree Gauß-Krüger zone 5 EPSG:31469

Data sample looks as following (demonstrated in the image below).

My workflow (similar to this Importing Spreadsheets or CSV files.) so far is

1. In Excel, Data > Save As...


2. I am trying with .xlsx, .txt(MS-DOS) or .csv(MS-DOS)


3. In QGIS everything visualized nicely in the sense that it is placed correctly. I have done it with several approaches, Layer > Add Layer > Add spreadsheet layer and Add Delimited Text Data


4. Afterwards, in QGIS, I am saving the opened point layer as a shapefile with Save vector layer as...


5. Then in the Attribute table, I do have several issues with data encoding and data type

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1. Data Type

When I import Excel data into QGIS I am partially losing my initial data types. For instance, instead of the desired 035, I do have 35. Obviously, it is about the import data type.

I have seen similar questions on this topic.

However, I can not understand how to create the file with .csvt extension. What is the workflow? How to create it and where it should be stored?

Of course, in Attribute table I can create a new column, appropriated with a text type, and then proceed with a Filed Calculator, using for instance lpad("FAA_Nr", 3, '0').

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2. Encoding

I am working with German text, that contains letters like ä, ö, ü, ß. When in QGIS, I apply any of the encoding formats (System, UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-15), none of my specific characters can be visualized.

Check the following graphics for UTF-8 and ISO-8859-15 accordingly.

I have found related topics,

However, I did not discover anything spectacular in the context of my issue. I am guessing that the problem is more with the Excel rather then QGIS, is not it?

Or maybe I apply the encode formatting on a wrong step. When should it be done?

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Target: optimizing the efforts required for the data input in QGIS.

Answer

You can re-use existing csvt files. There is no invisible relation, "filename.csv" is connected by the base filename with type file "filename.csvt".

Save these files and make a test:

test.csv

001,002

test.csvt

"String","Integer"

Now run ogrinfo

ogrinfo test.csv -al
INFO: Open of `test.csv'
      using driver `CSV' successful.

Layer name: test

Geometry: None
Feature Count: 1
Layer SRS WKT:
(unknown)
field_1: String (0.0)
field_2: Integer (0.0)
OGRFeature(test):1
  field_1 (String) = 001
  field_2 (Integer) = 2

If you have file "test2.csv" with the same structure just copy or rename test.csvt into test2.csvt.