The import wizard starts, I choose fixed width and the column markers Excel
decided to apply match those that apply if I just open the file using
right-click etc.

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

And if you open excel and use File|Open, what happens?

davehall wrote:

Hi Dave

We open by right-clicking on the file and selecting "Open with..".

I can open in Notepad and cut and paste in to Excel and it's fine but it
makes it a bit long-winded and is a step back from what we could do before.

Tried your suggestion to make Excel "forget", but it makes no difference.

Regards

Dave

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

How do you open this file?

Are you opening it in NotePad (or another text editor), then copy|pasting into
excel?

Then using Data|Text To Columns

If that's what you're doing, then you're seeing a helpful (sometimes!) feature
of excel.

It remembers how you parsed the data the last time you used data|text to
columns.

You can force excel to forget this memory by closing excel and reopening it
or
you could do a "dummy" data|text to columns.
Put a string (asdf) in an empty cell.
data|text to columns|delimited|uncheck all the delimiters
and then clean up that cell.

=========
I've never seen excel not prompt the user with the text to columns wizard when
they open a text file. (This doesn't apply to .csv files.)

If I guessed wrong (and just haven't seen your situation), then there's another
option.

Open Excel
File|Open
Select your .lst file
But hold the shift key when you click the Open button.

You won't see the text to columns wizard and everything should go into column A.

davehall wrote:

Hi, Daily we open a .lst file, which is a text file, which used to put each
line of data in to the first cell in a row. We then used the Text to Columns
feature to split in to individual cells. Within the last week, when we open
the file it splits in to individual cells automatically but doesn't split as
requried. I can only assume that a recent Excel update has introduced this
and wonder if anybody knows how to disable this "feature".

Dave - 17/3/2008

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Dave Peterson


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Dave Peterson