Geeks: I humbly ask for a MS Excel trick

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

I know you can save a field-delimited text file with an extension of .xls instead of .txt and Excel will open it and automagically interpret it as if it was a spreadsheet, silently converting the data to its own format. I've seen it done before, a long time ago.

But when I open the file I generated, all the data comes in one single column instead of seven, i.e., Excel ignores the delimiter. Here's some lines of the text file:

X2O,31,2,7,30.60,126:24,25.000
X2P,15,2,20,96.61,95:42,25.000
X2P,31,2,62,370.15,315:36,25.000
X3F,15,2,15,56.53,34:06,25.000

Can anybody see what I'm doing wrong?

[trotsky]

1. Did you try using the CSV extension?

Comma-separated values.

[rabid_nerd]

4. ack..

you beat me to it

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

5. You people ROCK!

That was it!

.CSV

:yourock:

[rabid_nerd]

2. Rename it

to .csv

Comma
Seperated
Values

[burythehatchet]

3. there's a dialog box that asks for the type of delimiter

sometimes people hit next without checking the correct box

[curlyred]

6. tab delimited will put the data in columns

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

9. Hey, that worked even better!

I get to keep the .xls extension and the user doesn't get confused! :yourock:

[ieoeja]

7. Does that comma separate a column or the thousands place?

I can see for myself that it is a column separator. But your PC is just a stupid computer.

o Instead, change the delimiter back to .txt.
o Run Excel.
o Click File..Open.
o Select "Files of type: Text files (*.prn; *.txt; *.csv)" -- you don't type all of this in, you select it from the box below the File name: box.
o Highlight the file you want to open and click Open.

o Click "Delimited" and Next.
o Click "Comma" to place a check mark before Comma. If the check mark is already there, do nothing.
o Click Finish.

[RobertSeattle]

8. Point of Order! Point of Order!

Someone mentioned a Microsoft product in a thread and we didn't get the obligatory Microsoft basher response!!!

:evilgrin:

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

10. Actually, Excel is THE one MS product that DOESN'T suck

But you pay through the nose for it, and it comes with evil Word and Powerpoint whether you want to or not! Remember when they were sold separately?

And before I forget: http://www.openoffice.org

[RobertSeattle]

11. Thank you for restoring my faith in Microosft bashers

:)

[Old and In the Way]

12. Love Excel, Hate Word.

Word is way too complicated for my pea-brain. Not intuitive at all. I use the Wordpad editor....works slick for me.

But I like Powerpoint, not so much for presentations, but for the outlining capabilities I can get all my thoughts down and then rearrange, so that writing reports and/or project synopsis are a snap.