Dave,

Firstly, thanks for your interest. I think I've made some progress, but I'm
not sure where to go next. Following are answers to your questions, plus new
information that, I think, makes the real problem much clearer.

1. Comma is definitely the list separator (no spaces, etc). Also the
/unregserver and /regserver things didn't make any difference.

2. When I'm using IE6 and download using the "Open in a New Window" option,
all the data arrives in column A. When I try to "Save As" it wants to use
"Text (Tab Delimited)". When I change that to "CSV" and save, then reopen it,
I have the same problem. Reason for this is now obvious because I have opened
the file with Notepad and following are the first couple of rows....
"Name,Stock,Bid $,Offer $,Last $,Change,%,Open $,High $,Low $,Volume"
"M-W Fund - M-W
Fund,ABS,7.420,7.430,7.420,-0.140,-1.85,7.510,7.520,7.410,221210"

It's obvious, even to me, that the quotes are the problem. But that's not
the whole story...

3. When I'm using IE6 and I download using the "Save As" option, it saves a
csv file. Opening it in Windows Explorer opens in Excel, with everythinhg in
the correct columns. Following are the first two rows of the file saved that
way. There are no quotes.
Name,Stock,Bid $,Offer $,Last $,Change,%,Open $,High $,Low $,Volume
M-W Fund - M-W Fund,ABS,7.660,7.450,7.560,0.000,0.00,0.000,0.000, 0.000,0

At this point I'm suspecting the download site, but then....

4. Perhaps I shouldn't mention this in this particular site, but I then
repeated 2. above using the Netscape browser. I downloaded using the "Open in
New Window" option, and used "Save As". It saved as a csv file (never
mentioned anything else), and when displayed using Notepad, there were no
quotes.

This implies to me that the quotes aren't there when downloaded. but are
being added as part of the IE6/Excel process, but not as part of the
IE6/Netyscape process.

Does any of this make any sense?







"Dave Peterson" wrote:

Just some comments/questions...

First, I'd double check the regional settings list separator character--no extra
trailing space characters/junk(?).

Second, if you save the file to a .csv file on your harddrive and then
doubleclick on that filename in windows explorer, does excel open it correctly
(separate columns for each field)?

Third (just a guess), I think I'd try to reregister excel so that it knows that
it owns the .csv extension.

Close Excel and
Windows Start Button|Run
excel /unregserver
then
Windows Start Button|Run
excel /regserver

The /unregserver & /regserver stuff resets the windows registry to excel's
factory defaults.

Then test it out.

Good luck,


Les M wrote:

I have recently upgraded to Windows XP Home edition and have reinstalled all
my applications. I regularly download csv files from one particular site and
use them in Excel, but now they always download with all data in column A (in
the past they downloaded correctly as csv files, using separate columns).

In Control panel/Regional settings, comma is specified as the list
separator, but this is not having the required effect.

I can go through the "Data/Text to Columns/Delimited/comma" process each
time I download (and that process works), but I would like the default to
operate as it should.

Any helpful advice would be appreciated.

--

Dave Peterson