Use the standard "Open" command. Then go to "Text Import Wizard" and choose that the original data type was delimited. You may need to go to a different step of the Wizard to specify that the delimiter is a space, but the Wizard does include the option of specifying what character the delimiter is.
How do I open space-delimited file in Microsoft Excel?
Question
When i try to open space delimited file in excel, the whole content opens in a single column. Is there any way to open the space delimited file in excel so that the delimited contents are properly formatted into different columns?
My scenario is that i have a file that needs the delimiter to be some thing like '" ' (A inverted command followed by a space), because my file format is like this:
"First Name" "Gender" "Phone"
"Tom Jones" "M" "123-123-1234"
Solution
OTHER TIPS
On the Data tab click on From Text in the Get External Data section.
Tell the Wizard to use the space as the delimiter.
I think you can specify the string quotation mark('
, "
or none) in the wizard, in the same step where you specify the delimiter.
- Open the CSV file with Excel 2016.
- Look for "Data" tab and "Text in column" button.
- In the step 1, select "Delimited".
- In the step 2, select first "space", and then choose "string classifier" as
"
. Then Excel will recognise the string quoted in" "
and separate in columns the data with space. - Change format in step 3. "Finish".
Note: be sure that all the delimiter is one space; several spaces will be divided into several columns. To avoid that, please preprocess the csv
file with a text editor. Sublime Text/Notepad++ will do. To make is more clear, I always substitute the delimiter with ;
.
Replace multiple (more than one) spaces with ;
: find \s\s*
and replace with ;
. Change by need.
For Excel on Mac, I had to :
- Select column
- Data -> Text to columns
- Select Delimited
- Select Delimiter
It's insane that that such a simple task is so difficult. Use google docs, it will recognise the format, and copy back.