Excel: Choosing Comma or Tab Delimited When Importing Files

 Last reviewed: October 31, 1994
Article ID: Q48193

SUMMARY

When you open a text document in Microsoft Excel version 2.20 or later, Excel has the option to read in either tabs or comma delimiters.

To open a text document in Excel, do the following:

  1. From the File menu, choose Open.

  2. Click the Text button.

  3. Excel offers the choice of either tabs or commas as column delimiters. Choose the appropriate option for the text file.

  4. Click OK.

Tab delimiters cause the text after a tab to be entered in the next column. Comma delimiters cause text after a comma to be placed in a new column.

KBCategory: kbother
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Additional reference words: 2.20 3.00

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Last reviewed: October 31, 1994
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