import wizard

[Joyce]

Hi,
I have a user that is importing a txt file (was exported
from Access to Excel and then saved as a txt file) the
user wants to use the wizard because she wants the format
to show "pipes" between columns. What's happening is she
is seeing the "squares". Even if she chooses "other" and
types in a | she still gets the square. The report needs
to show pipes. Does anyone know why this is happening?
Thanks.

 

[Dave Peterson]

That "other" character on the delimiter dialog, isn't asking what should be
shown between fields after you import the text file.

It's asking what is the separator that is used in the Text file that
distinguishes fields.

The delimiter itself is eaten up by excel (and never shown) after you do the
import.

But I'm kind of confused. If your user opens the text file in Notepad, can you
pick out the correct delimiter (or do you actually see that box character).

If you see the box character in Notepad, maybe you could do use your favorite
text editor and edit|replace them to a nicer character.

Or import them to excel and try to figure out what character they are.

Chip Pearson has a nice program to help. It'll tell you the ascii value for
each character in a cell.

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/CellView.htm

If you're lucky, you might be able to use that info in your text to columns
dialog. Sometimes you can use alt-#### (where #### is the ascii code for that
character typed using the numeric keypad.) But sometimes, this doesn't work.

=======
If the user can import the values, maybe they just have to insert a bunch of
adjacent columns and fill them with the vertical bar. (I think I'd use a nice
border, though.)