Forcing Text Import Wizard to run

[Guest]

Is there any way that I can force the Text Import Wizard to run when opening a file, from the command line, in Excel? We have a program that outputs .rpt files, which are comma delimited, and I have added a file association to open them in Excel. Unfortunately they then open with all data in one column. I know I can change the extension to .txt, but then each file has to be opened from within outlook. I want to be able to double click the file and open excel automatically, with the Import Text Wizard started. I want to modify the file association configuration to force the text wizard to run. Any ideas (he says hopefully)?

 

[Guest]

Sorry, I made a typing error in my original message; when I said "each file has to be opened from within outlook" I meant "each file has to be opened from within excel". Hope that didn't confuse the issue.

 

[Dave Peterson]

How about just renaming the *.rpt to *.csv.

If your windows regional settings have the list separator a comma, you'll be all
set.

 

[Dave Peterson]

Oops. If you rename the file to .csv, you won't get the text to columns
wizard. But excel will parse your data based on those commas.

 

[Guest]

Thank you for the suggestions, but this person receives many of these files as email attachments, and is hoping to avoid the "save as", "rename", "open explorer and double-click" (or open excel and click File, Open) procedure entirely. He claims that he used to be able to just double-click the attachment in the email, and it opened Excel and started the wizard. Now it does not. I had my doubts, but he is insisting that it worked. The only way I could see that working is if the File Association somehow included an instruction to start the Text Import Wizard when opening. I guess if the Text Import Wizard was a separate program, I could even associate the file extension with the wizard rather than Excel itself, but I can't find an executable file to start the wizard

Eric

 

[Dave Peterson]

I didn't test this, but maybe you could.

Try associating .rpt with excel
shift right click on a .rpt file in windows explorer
choose Open With
select excel

See what happens.

If it's all imported into a single column, tell the user to do Data|Text to
columns. Maybe that'll be easy enough for him to use.

If it parses it into nice columns, then it's even better.

And if it works, you assign .rpt to excel permanently (be aware that it could
affect other registered programs.)

 

[Dave Peterson]

Just make sure your boss knows that YOU fixed it. <vbg>