Can I take a huge irregular text file and place it into columns?
 

I have a large file that comes in as text. When I bring it into excel, it
all goes into one column. I need each piece of data to be placed into a
seperate column. The problem that I have is that the information is not
spaced regularly from row to row. Or marked with any special cahracters. I
need to be able to write several macros that check each row for specific keys
(text strings) and parse the data accordginly. I am beginning to think that
this is nearly impossible and I would be better off asking my MIS guy to
write a translator program. So that the file can go directly into excel
without having to use notepad as the middle man. Does anyone have any
suggestions?

Can I take a huge irregular text file and place it into columns?
 

Is there anything< unique about the rows that would indicate how to
separate them into columns?

From your post it sounds like the info is coming out of some software
package (not named), pasted into Notepad, and then pasted into Excel or
imported into Excel. I often do something similar to strip out the
"overhead" that a software package leaves inside the information. This
overhead may contain little clues that could constitute the unique
identifiers you need to determine how to separate the homogeneous rows
into columnar data.

Please post what software the information is coming from, and if you
can, post a sample of data with "before" and your desired "after"
results.

Can I take a huge irregular text file and place it into columns?
 

I'd approach the IT guy and ask him how difficult it would be to give you a
comma separated (or pipe delimited or anything unique delmited) text file.

Those guys do coding for a living and may be able to get it done pretty quickly
-- after it's scheduled, that is <bg.

PerplexedinKY wrote:

I have a large file that comes in as text. When I bring it into excel, it
all goes into one column. I need each piece of data to be placed into a
seperate column. The problem that I have is that the information is not
spaced regularly from row to row. Or marked with any special cahracters. I
need to be able to write several macros that check each row for specific keys
(text strings) and parse the data accordginly. I am beginning to think that
this is nearly impossible and I would be better off asking my MIS guy to
write a translator program. So that the file can go directly into excel
without having to use notepad as the middle man. Does anyone have any
suggestions?

--

Dave Peterson