Thread: Unwanted formatting of downloads

Hi, all

Lately I've been downloading certain sheets of data (from Yahoo among others), only to find that any figure that could possibly be translated to some date or another, turns up as exactly that: a date.
Working through the format options leaves me with either ridiculously large figures: something like 6574993 instead of feb.9, or 2,09, as it probably should be.
Hopefully there's yet another option which I've not discovered so far (I have finally gotten the 2007 edition, and I'm not quite familiar with it yet).
Anyone here familiar with this problem?
Thanks in advance
BCB

Hi, and my apologies for my late response.

Unfortunately, your suggestion addresses part of the problem: either (when I go for the "text" or "Unicode text" options from the Paste special) I get the entire row (perfectly written, of course) squeezed into the first cell, or - when I just choose "Paste": the opposite result: data neatly splitted into their respective columns, but with the mischievious dates popping up here and there.
And that's where the options are at all available.
When clicking the "download to spreadsheet"-button on some internet site, there's no getting around the morass of numbers presented as a table (but squeezed into the first cell/column as mentioned above) - or not at all. That's whether or not I open it or save it directly - there's no intermediary station with any formatting options.
I was hoping there might be some overlooked formatting tools in some hitherto undiscovered toolbox in the plentiful toolbar menu.
Aren't there any other ways about it? It really should be a simple operation.

Thanks anyway for your reply.

BCB

Hello, again, and yet another apology for slow replies.

I discovered a way around it that works - so far. The solution is as embarrasingly simple as I hoped.
After having pasted the data onto the sheet, after having made the until now futile selections(in the cut/paste-menu), there turns up a little icon in the shape of a briefcase (beside the data, on the spreadsheet). I clicked it, mostly out of boredom, because they've never seemed to offer any useful information before.
Well, wrong, and you probably know the rest: it's another set of pasting options, and one of them's exactly what I needed.
And maybe what you were suggesting all along. In that case, I should have given a more detailed description of the options I've tried.
Thanks for your time, anyway.


BCB

Error!

I take everything in my last message back. I was wrong - or lucky with the last set of data pasted: simply no figures there able to be read as dates.
So the same problem persists.
Even when I try going by your text first solution, it turns up as dates there as well.
Luckily I haven't thrown my old, slow computer, with a 2003 edition. None of the mentioned problems there.
Could it be some preset/prefomatting issues, you think?
I just can't see why it insists on this "extra service" in the first place.
Grateful for any suggestions.
BCB

Hi, thanks for your efforts
I'm unfortunately not getting anywhere.
Now I've found a new problem: when I try opening the text file(saved both as Word or WordPad) from Excel, it refuses to read/open it with the following message: "The file format is invalid".
But it would still be quite a roundabout way of doing it, as this is an operation to be performed on a daily and/or weekly basis, with just a few key strokes - as it has been until I started with my new computer(with a newer Excel edition, alas). Even if I got the text importing to work, it would be just as quick to manually type the occasional 30,12 where there's 30.dec, etc.
This is beginning to resemble a virus. One wouldn't expect the latest and presumably best edition of Excel to put the user through all this hassle, in order to avoid a special feature that's not been asked for initially.
Appreciate your suggestions, though. Thanks a lot.

BCB

Hello, again

Glad you suggested it. I was actually about to ask you what happens when you (or someone else) try the same operation.
Maybe there's something in the formatting on the host side(Yahoo, etc).
Now, as I've never done any of this here zipping & attaching before, I don't trust this attachment to work seamlessly. That would be too easy.
Maybe I don't even have to do this:

XMPL.xls.

.. - or maybe that's not working, so in that case, I've just copied a few of the rows directly from the spreadsheet.

23.mar.10 16.88 17.mai 16.69 16.72 11,513,800 16.72
22.mar.10 17.41 17.44 16.82 16.95 17,060,000 16.95
19.mar.10 16.94 17.38 16.94 17.26 16,070,500 17.26
18.mar.10 17.15 17.23 17.feb 17.jun 14,385,400 17.jun
17.mar.10 17.22 17.29 17.jan 17.18 11,894,200 17.18
16.mar.10 17.38 17.50 17.22 17.27 9,234,700 17.27
15.mar.10 17.50 17.74 17.39 17.49 9,039,700 17.49
12.mar.10 17.30 17.55 17.30 17.40 12,322,700 17.40

And, yes, with the wonderful formatting intact.

For further inquiries, (without any potential garbage from my computer) you could go to Yahoo Finance and type QID or FAZ in the stock symbol field. Then just click the chart when it appears and a new page (with more chart options) turns up, along with "Historical prices" offered below the daily figures. That's the source for what we're discussing.
Looking forward to hear about your experiences!
Thanks for your troubles, and a happy easter to you.

BCB

Hi, and thanks again for your efforts.

Unfortunately it doesn't help. Either it's the same nonsense (dates) when finished, or the text import field turns black, with none of those vertical separating lines. The first is when I go by tab, the last when I use comma. Or maybe it was the other way around. I'm a bit cross-eyed right now, as I've been trying to import some historical Forex data first, where the data chosen turns up as an Excel Open or Save option, from which I have to copy over to the plain text file, the one that in its turn is opened by a new Excel spreadsheet.
And there's been a few variations of the same problems.
Maybe it's a language issue; I'll change it to English one of these days, or maybe it's some other settings that I haven't looked into.
As before: I appreciate your efforts, and might still get use for them at a later stage.
Cheers
BCB