Save trailing empty cells in a tab delimited text file

**osios** · 04-23-2006, 05:55 AM

Hi,

I have a tab delimited text file which contains some empty values in some of the cells, and some of the lines have empty cells at the end of the line. In my original file (outputted by some software) empty cells at the end of the line are represnted by a number of '\t' characters with empty strings in between.

When I open the file to edit it in excel and then resave it, empty cells at the end of a line are not saved.

An example:
If this is the original line string (spaces are not part of the string - they just seperate chracters here, for clarity):

1 \t 2 \t \t \t \n

Excel will save it as:

1 \t 2 \n

I need the file saved in the first format of the example rather then in the second format outputted by excel in order to continue processing it in other software. Any way to do it, if I know in advance how many columns I need in each line?

**Bryan Hessey** · 04-23-2006, 06:13 AM

Hi,

You could put $$4$$ in the next empty column, edit the output file in Notepad and Replace All ,$$4$$ with nothing.

Hope this helps

--

Originally Posted by osios

Hi,

I have a tab delimited text file which contains some empty values in some of the cells, and some of the lines have empty cells at the end of the line. In my original file (outputted by some software) empty cells at the end of the line are represnted by a number of '\t' characters with empty strings in between.

When I open the file to edit it in excel and then resave it, empty cells at the end of a line are not saved.

An example:
If this is the original line string (spaces are not part of the string - they just seperate chracters here, for clarity):

1 \t 2 \t \t \t \n

Excel will save it as:

1 \t 2 \n

I need the file saved in the first format of the example rather then in the second format outputted by excel in order to continue processing it in other software. Any way to do it, if I know in advance how many columns I need in each line?