I have several rather extensive text files (extracted from an antiquated
local database) that I wish to import into either Access or Excel as
functional databases.

So far I've had the best results importing into Excel, as this at least
manages to divide the info into several fields somewhat, although still not
nearly as well as I'd like.
Several elements get crammed together in one cell when I choose to import
seperately.

In Access, the results are even worse and I can't even manage to make decent
cells out of the info. Most of the time the info gets imported into one
column, or into a zillion ones if I choose space as a seperator symbol, which
I truly don't want of course.

I've tried tinkering about with both applications a bit, but can't seem to
generate moderately desireable results.
I'm gonna try now to improve the textual layout of the source text in Word,
see if that can improve the import performance slightly, but apart from that
I wonder what I can do to import the text into either Excel or Access into
proper, functional cells.

Please give me some feedback. Any help or ideas would be appreciated.