Drag text file to Excel -- stopped working

[Art Saffran]

For several months I have been importing a space delimited text file to Excel
by simply dragging the .txt file to an open Excel worksheet. The text file is
then parsed into columns automatically. It's a very quick alternative to
importing the txt file.

Today, after a Windows update was automatically installed, the txt file is
no longer parsed. Rather, it brings in the data rows as a single column
instead of separate columns. Since I need to copy one column, this is a
problem.

Is there a way to restore the ability of Excel to parse the data
automatically when the delimited text file is dragged to an open Excel
worksheet?

Thanks.

--Art

 

[Don]

What version of Excel?

You should be able to select the column and do "text to column" or when
opening maybe there is an option in the files and types.

 

[Art Saffran]

Hi Don,

I'm using Excel 2003. What I've been doing is dragging a .txt file that
contains space-delimited data onto an open Excel worksheet. The result has
been a new worksheet opens with the data nicely displayed in columns as
though I walked through the File/Open and data import wizard. It's worked
just like skipping the wizard...very cool.

Now it suddenly stopped working.

--Art

 

[David Biddulph]

It may be worth going into Excel, into the Text to Columns Wizard, & setting
the delimiting options to suit your preferences. Close the wizard, and then
see how your txt file is treated.

 

[Scott W.]

I have two users complaining about the same issue. They say that they were
able to do this via drag and drop or double click prior to last week. I
think I might know what patch was applied but I'm having trouble figuring out
how to remove it.

 

[Scott W.]

I determined that it was the result of a patch KB951548 which was part of
MS08-043 . I removed KB951548 and the previous functionality returned.