Thanks for the idea.

However, changing extension to TXT treats each line of the file as a
separate excel row (even though the "text delimiter" is set to ", and the end
of line is inside a quoted string).

My data contains some multi-line entries that I need to go into a single cell.

"Earl Kiosterud" wrote:

Mike,

Try this: Change the file extension from .csv to .txt. That will start the
text wizard. Format the columns as text, or as required. For more on
reading/importing text files, check out www.smokeylake.com/excel. Read "Text
files and Excel."

You may need to examine the file by opening it with NotePad, or any text
editor. That will allow you to ensure that there are suitable commas and
quotes as necessary with the fields of the file. Excel does a lot of
interpretive stuff (as you've found out); NotePad shows you the file,
character for character.
--
Earl Kiosterud
mvpearl omitthisword at verizon period net
-------------------------------------------

"MikeDb" wrote in message
...
I have output from an application that I wish to view in excel (office
2000).
This output is in CSV format.

When I open the CSV file, excel puts all the text into a single cell
instead
of into multiple cells on multiple lines.

The file contains the following text as part of a field:

The SQL statements should read ""INSERT INTO <table_name
(<attribute1_name,
<attribute3_name, <attribute3_name) VALUES (<value1, <value2,
<value3);""

It appears that text between angle brackets (<) is being interpreted by
excel as HTML tags (if this is part of a large file, then an HTML error is
generated).
If I replace all "<" with "{", then the file opens correctly.

How can I stop Excel 2000 from trying to do clever stuff with the text?