Simple ... or maybe not - saving spreadsheet in text format

[papaia]

Hi, everyone,


I have this issue - which appeared very simple, in the beginning - that is bugging me now for quite some time:

Given: spreadsheet with "L" columns, with length of records varying inside each column from 6 to 24, ALMOST consistent by column (i.e. 90% of each column has the record length the same, and 10% differs in length).

Objective: saving this in a text file, with the beginning of each column perfectly aligned, no matter the length of the previous one

Tried:

1. PRN format - this is the only one preserving the beginning of the columns, thus aligning their beginnings. Problem? Limited in total length of lines to approx 240 characters (thus wrapping the output)

2. Various text formats (tab delimited, comma delimited, printing to a file via the generic/text printer, etc.)

3. Reformatted the columns in the spredsheet, to "force" the length of the records (where needed) to be the max sized ones (e.g. "Customs" - 000...00)

absolutely anything to no avail.

Any ideas, folks?

TIA,

Papi

 

[macleanb]

You've heard of thinking outside the box - well this is "inside the box" thinking from me - I am not to proud to suggest this - as its the sort of thing I do - but there are probably "real" solutions to this which hopefully someone else will post:

On another sheet create formulas similar to:

=left(Sheet1!A1 & rept(" ",25),25)

Copy these down/right, adjusting as the 25 to whatever each column needs (you could even use a cell ref for this)

Then try exporting this sheet.

 

[papaia]

Re: Simple ... or maybe not - saving spreadsheet in text for

I just now realized why PRN would work - it is about the "width" of the column, not the number of characters in it! I verified, and - once having data organized in a specific column WIDTH, without changing the number of characters in a record (i.e. no "customized" cells) - the export looks fine. The problem with prn exports is limited size, basically. I have also tried "printing" to a generic/text printer driver, to a file (which - I think - would keep the same properties I am interested in), but those are limited in output (paper size)

So - the whole question changes to: how can I preserve column width in txt exports?

thx,
Papi