Saturday, January 08, 2005

Exporting Excel files to a CSV or TXT (tab delimited) file

Excel enables you to save a file in a number of formats.
A text or csv file is also known as a flat file. The reason for this is it is a 2 dimensional database only.
This means that only 1 sheet can be saved in the file.
The sheet must consist of columns and rows (fields and records) of data.
Fancy frmatting will also disappear if you save a file as txt or csv.

A common use for these files is as input (or export from) applications. For example you can export your Outlook Contacts to a txt file. You can then edit them in excel (by opening the txt file - and then saving it as a txt file) and then reimport them into another outlook application.

Most accounting packages (which are databases) can export to txt or csv format and can also import from it. Thus it can be easier to do bulk data entry or settings entry into excel, save as a txt or csv file and then import that information into the accounting application.


Posted by: Jethro | 7:45 AM |