Converting excel spreadsheet to text file

[czhe]

Hi everyone,

I have a spreadsheet with columns of data. I'm wondering if there's a way to convert this to a text file and preserve all the nicely formatted columns. I've tried saving as a text file (tab-delimited or unicode) but the resulting text file is shifted all over the place.

I'm also wondering if it's possible to do this without using "tab" characters but rather "spaces".

Thanks for any insight and help,
czhe

[Richard Schollar]

Hi

You could save the file as Formatted Text (Space Delimited) - these are .prn files.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'nicely formatted columns' - text files won't retain any formatting (bold, colors, fonts, underlinings etc).

Richard

[czhe]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

What I mean by nicely formatted columns is that when it gets converted to text, I want the spacing and columns to be preserved. If I just save as a text file from Excel, the columns are no longer preserved and it looks like a mess.

[ChemistB]

Unless your spacing in Excel is wholely due to blank spaces before and after the text, you will lose the formatting. Trying to line things up would be very difficult. Why do you want to save as a text file?

[Richard Schollar]

Try to think of text files as saving just the values - text files don't contain any bells & whistles such as formatting. To preserve formatting you need to save the file as an xls file. So like ChemistB I would ask why you want to save it as a text file?