I use xl2002 at home and xl2000 at work and xl97 earlier.
When I do/did a file|save As, there's an option for "save as type" on every
version I've seen that says:
Formatted Text (Space Delimited) (*.prn)
The suggestion you made will not result in a text file that a human can read.
The only thing that I've ever been able to do with a .prn file created your way
was to copy it to that type of printer.
The .prn file that is Formatted Text is a plain old ASCII text file. It has
lots of other uses. I've been wrong lots of times, but I'll bet dollars to
doughnuts that the original poster is more interested in plain text than a .prn
file that can be used to copy to a printer.