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Dave Peterson Dave Peterson is offline
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Default saved Excel as .txt then reopened - now I have squares

I saved this from a previous post. You may find it useful:

Chip Pearson has a very nice addin that will help determine what that
character(s) is:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/CellView.aspx

Depending on what that character is, you may be able to use alt-#### (from the
number keypad) to enter the character into the Other box in the text to columns
wizard dialog.

In fact, you may be able to select the character (in the formula bar), and copy
it. Then use ctrl-v to paste into that text to columns Other box.

You may be able to use Edit|Replace to change the character--Some characters can
be entered by holding the alt-key and typing the hex number on the numeric
keypad. For example, alt-0010 (or ctrl-j) can be used for linefeeds. But I've
never been able to get alt-0013 to work for carriage returns.

Another alternative is to fix it via a formula:

=substitute(a1,char(##),"")

Replace ## with the ASCII value you see in Chip's addin.

Or you could use a macro (after using Chip's CellView addin):

Option Explicit
Sub cleanEmUp()

Dim myBadChars As Variant
Dim myGoodChars As Variant
Dim iCtr As Long

myBadChars = Array(Chr(##)) '<--What showed up in CellView?

myGoodChars = Array("")

If UBound(myGoodChars) < UBound(myBadChars) Then
MsgBox "Design error!"
Exit Sub
End If

For iCtr = LBound(myBadChars) To UBound(myBadChars)
ActiveSheet.Cells.Replace What:=myBadChars(iCtr), _
Replacement:=myGoodChars(iCtr), _
LookAt:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, _
MatchCase:=False
Next iCtr

End Sub

If you're new to macros:

Debra Dalgleish has some notes how to implement macros he
http://www.contextures.com/xlvba01.html

David McRitchie has an intro to macros:
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/getstarted.htm

Ron de Bruin's intro to macros:
http://www.rondebruin.nl/code.htm

(General, Regular and Standard modules all describe the same thing.)

MDG wrote:

I have an Excel document that includes a list of e-mail addresses as well as
other data. This was saved as a .txt file. When reopened, the double quotes
that were inserted by Notepad are apparently not recognized by Excel and so
show up as squares. Not sure if Notepad separates columns using the double
quotes, but it seems that way and so I don't have much control over it. Any
thoughts about fixing this OR a way to resave so that the quotes don't show
up to begin with??


--

Dave Peterson