• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
How To Convert Delimited Text Files To ExcelSpreadsheets 
I am not much of an Excel hand; spending most of my time either inMicrosoft Word or PowerPoint. My most regular use of Excel is as a tool tokeep track of my schedule and to list what I am putting out on the web as awriter. So I can safely say that at least in my case, the enormous power
that’s in this spreadsheet program lies latent. But it happens to all of us that
sometimes some tasks, if not taken, get thrust upon us (just likegreatness!).So it was with me when I had to convert a delimited text data file to Excel
and format it within the columns and rows. That’s a rough challenge for a
guy who has a chronic fear of anything that resembles figures. The raw filethat I had in my hand consisted of higgledy-piggledy blocks of text andnumbers. My simple task was to make sense out of this jumble by importingit into Excel and sorting the data into columns and rows.Thankfully, many web tutorials came to the rescue of my dead brain cells.
Delimited files
are a simple way to store data and import or export it between various applications. Delimited in
essence means, data that’s separated by specific delimiter characters. Common delimiters are
 
tab,comma 
and
semicolon 
.
Think of delimited files as the most basic file format that’s almost uniformly accepted by
most spreadsheet and
database programs. For those of us who don’t go down that road, a common example is the CSV (Comma
Separated Value) files or Tab-separated files we come across in the Import Export wizards of email programs likeOutlook and Gmail.A delimited file is of no actual use unless it is converted into some form suitable for analysis and study. Microsoftmakes it easy to convert a delimited file to a spreadsheet in three easy steps.
Let’s start with a text file with some data separated by comma
s.To bring the data into Excel
 –
 1. Open Excel and copy-paste the text contents into a spreadsheet. The contents take up one columnand several rows.
 
 2. Click on the column header to select the entire column. Click on the
Data 
tab in the ribbon andthen
Text to Columns 
in the
Data Tools 
group.3. Clicking on the above command opens the
Convert Text to Columns Wizard 
.4.
Alternatively
 
 –
You can directly import a text file into Excel. Excel handles file types
 –
Text, CommaSeparated Values and Printer Text File. Make sure to dropdown to
All Files 
or
Text Files 
in the FileOpen dialog while selecting the file to import. If Excel recognizes it to be a delimited file, it opensthe
Text Import Wizard 
which is similar to the
Convert Text to Columns Wizard 
.
 
 In the Wizard, choose
Delimited 
and click on
Next 
.5. In the second step, choose the
Delimiter 
for you particular file (comma, in our case). For some othercharacter, check
Other 
and enter the character in the little field. The
Data Preview 
window gives youan idea how the contents get separated into columnar data. Click on
Next 
.
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...