Page 647 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

an empty cell at the beginning of a blank region in the worksheet (or better yet, in a blank worksheet) before you invoke the Text Import Wizard. That way, you never run the risk of the incoming text file data wiping out existing data in the worksheet.
Figure 2-12 illustrates how the Text Import Wizard works and can help you to successfully import a text file that consists of a data list into an Excel worksheet. This figure shows the Text Import Wizard — Step 1 of 3 dialog box that first appears when you try to open a text file from the Import Text File dialog box.
External Data Query 629
Figure 2-12:
The first
of three Text Import Wizard dialog boxes for parsing a text file.
As this figure shows, Excel has analyzed the data and determined that it uses some sort of delimiting character. If you’re dealing with a text file in which the data items all use the same number of characters (such as 11 spaces for SSN and 10 spaces for ID number), click the Fixed Width option button.
The Text Import Wizard always assumes that you want to start importing the data from the first to the very last line in the text file. If you don’t need the first line or lines imported (because they contain data, such as titles, that you’d only have to eliminate from the worksheet if you did bring them in), use the preview list box to determine the number of the first line to import and then enter that number in the Start Import Row text box or use its spin- ner buttons to select this number.
Figure 2-13 shows the second Text Import Wizard dialog box that appears when you click the Next button in the Step 1 of 3 dialog box. As you can see, the Text Import Wizard — Step 2 of 3 dialog box contains a Data Preview sec- tion that shows your text data aligned (simulating its column arrangement in your Excel worksheet).
Book VI Chapter 2
Filtering and Querying a Data List