Importing a Text File

Excel can read data from quite a few other spreadsheet and database programs, but you may have a colleague who uses a spreadsheet or database program that creates files you can’t read with Excel. If that’s the case, you can ask your colleague to save the file as a text file, using a comma, tab, or other character (called a delimiter) to mark the end of each cell’s data. Even if you’re unable to transfer data any other way, you can always read spreadsheet data if it’s presented to you in a text file. Any formatting or formulas will be lost, but the data will be there for you to analyze.

Bring Text into Excel

  1. Click the Data tab.

  2. In the Get External Data group, click From Text.

  3. Navigate to the folder that contains the text file you want to import.

  4. Double-click the text file.

    Bring Text into Excel
    Bring Text into Excel

    Tip

    Tip

    If your text file contains data where each data column always contains the same number of characters, select the Fixed Width option button on the first Text Import Wizard page, click Next, and then use the following wizard pages to define each field’s width.

  5. Select the Delimited option button.

  6. Click Next.

  7. Select the file’s delimiter character.

  8. Verify that the data appears correctly in the Data Preview pane.

  9. Click Finish.

  10. Click OK.

    Tip
    Tip

    Tip

    Tip

    If you can choose whether to have a text file created so that it contains fixed-width or delimited values, ask for the delimited values. Character delimiters are much easier for Excel to detect, which means less work for you when you want to import the data.

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