

If you data is not represented correctly, delete the automatically created step “Changed Type”.switching thousands- and decimal separators) click on “Edit”. If you want to separate your import data with the “Fixed Width” option, you have to type the numbers of characters, after which you want to data to be divided. Here you can also switch to “Fixed Width”. Click on “From Text/CSV” on the “Data” ribbon in order to start the import process.Please refer to the numbers on the screenshots: Importing text files in Excel with the “Get & Transform” tools requires many steps. Finalize the import by clicking on “Finish”.…for defining decimals and thousands separators.For dates, you could define the order of days, months and years. For each column, you can choose the data format.Usually text fields use quotation marks marking the beginning and end of a text field.This is the character dividing the data into columns, for example “Tab”, “Semicolon” or “Comma”. If the first row contains headers, check the corresponding box.Select how you want to define the columns: Either with a character as a separator or with a fixed width.Please refer to the paragraph above if this option is missing. If you have a recent Excel version and there is no button called “From Text” (but instead “From Text/CSV”), click on “Get Data”, then on “Legacy Wizards” and then on “From Text (Legacy)”. Go to the “Data” ribbon and click on “From Text”.It will push you down the "Delimited" direction though, so pay attention when firing it up.The steps for using the “Text Import Wizard” in Excel are shown in the screenshots. That works nicely and lets you use the technique. So if a single line works for you, well, awesome. But TWO inserted cells worked reliably and always. Still not the single cell when reduced to that again. well, all the way down to TWO lines (cells) worked. So I suspected a single line might not work. One bothersome one can be solved by inserting eight lines of data at the head of a column (well, in that column's position in eight inserted LINES, of course) of fake data crafted to fool the wizard into thinking the whole column is characterized by them. There are other problems that occur with the Import Text wizard and its abbreviated son/daughter the Text To Columns wizard. If you wish to use the "Insert a line/cell with a lot of X's in it and no spaces, you need to insert a minimum of TWO. You might start by using the macro recorder to record a session with the Text to Columns Wizard and see if what is recorded is a good starting place for future conversions.

This is a particularly good solution if you find that your project involves working with identically formatted text all the time. After the wizard is complete, you can then simply delete the row.įinally, you can develop a Visual Basic routine to handle the data deconstruction for you.

When you run the wizard, Excel won't be able to figure out where the breaks are in this data, so it doesn't venture any guesses. For instance, you might put in 200 X characters, with no spaces or punctuation. In the row, put a long string of characters with no spaces. Before you run the Convert Text to Columns Wizard, insert a blank row at the top of your data. (Courier is a monospace font and may help Excel better "see" the natural breaking points for the data.)Īnother possibility is to trick Excel into thinking that it is best not to guess about breaks. For instance, some people have reported better results in Excel's guesses if you format the source column with a Courier font before doing the conversion. There are a few things you can try, however, that may help. There is no way to stop Excel from guessing when trying to parse fixed-width data. She wonders if there is a way to clear all of the suggested break lines at once so she can enter the break lines manually where she wants them. She needs to use the fixed-width parsing in the tool, and Excel looks at the source data and suggests places where the data should be "broken." Milda finds this annoying, as Excel normally guesses wrong. Milda needs to use Excel's Convert Text to Columns feature quite often for one of her work projects.
