I need to open a number of tab delimited files in Excel 2003. Each row has a
number of columns, some have numeric data with leading zeros that need to be
imported as text. The default Wizard option for these columns is "General"
and it takes quite a bit of time going thru each column to change it to
"Text". Is there a way to change the default column formating to "Text" so
when the Wizard runs, the column default is "Text" instead of "General"?

Thanks!

Turn on the macro recorder while you go through the steps.

You should get close to what you want, if not exactly.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Sat, 22 Apr 2006 19:25:02 -0700, SteveB
wrote:

I need to open a number of tab delimited files in Excel 2003. Each row has a
number of columns, some have numeric data with leading zeros that need to be
imported as text. The default Wizard option for these columns is "General"
and it takes quite a bit of time going thru each column to change it to
"Text". Is there a way to change the default column formating to "Text" so
when the Wizard runs, the column default is "Text" instead of "General"?

Thanks!

Another alternative if the columns that are text are contiguous.

When you're in the wizard, click on the left most text column and shift click on
the rightmost text column and then choose text.

If all the column fields are text (or can be treated as text), you can get them
all at once, too.

SteveB wrote:

I need to open a number of tab delimited files in Excel 2003. Each row has a
number of columns, some have numeric data with leading zeros that need to be
imported as text. The default Wizard option for these columns is "General"
and it takes quite a bit of time going thru each column to change it to
"Text". Is there a way to change the default column formating to "Text" so
when the Wizard runs, the column default is "Text" instead of "General"?

Thanks!

--

Dave Peterson

Hey!

Check out TextConverter. There you just change the output column type and it should work.

Nikita