I'm a data guy, so this is way outside my normal scope with excel..

I'm trying to build a text file that'll be an import file to my new shopping
cart..

up to the point where I add the HTML stuff, it's a no-brainer.. doesn't
matter if I'm saving as csv or tab.. it's all "normal" data.. item number,
description, category, price, weight, file names, etc.. we can all make files like this in our sleep..

doesn't matter if I save as csv or tab-delimited, I can close the file, then re-open the file, and it opens as a normal "text" file in excel..

my next step was getting the HTML into a cell for each record, and having the display stay as text.. finally found out that if I click into the cell, to get the cursor in the cell first, it'll paste as text..

but once I add the HTML, then save and close the file (csv or tab), it re-opens in excel as one long column A, formatted, with each cell in a new row..

using Excel 2000, but I've already tested this in 2003, too.. if somebody wants a sample file, I'll gladly supply it..

geez, guys.. this one isn't even interesting enough to read?.. 26 views, and most other recent posts have hundreds of hits.. oh, well..

Please post the excel file. I'm unclear as to what you're trying to achieve; it might help if you broke it down into input, step 1, 2, 3 etc, and final output.

thanks for the reply.. simple stuff, I thought.. line-without.txt doesn't have any HTML in it.. it opens normally (like any text file, csv, etc.) with the Text Wizard.. line-with.txt has HTML in the third cell.. it does not call up the Text Wizard, and it opens with each cell going down thru column A, formatted..

how do you tell excel to simply open the file as text?

I'm having trouble replicating the problem. Here are my steps, using Excel 2007. (This is what I was asking you to write instead of the vague "I'm trying to do something but it's doing something else".)

1. Start Excel.

2. Alt F, O to bring up the open dialog.

3. Set file type to Text Files.

4. Double-click line-with.txt, which brings up the text import wizard dialog.

5. Leave original data type set to "delimited", ignore the code page stuff, click next.

6. Leave delimiters set to Tab, text qualifier set to double quotes and 'treat consecutive delimiters as one' unchecked. Click next.

7. Leave the columns alone. Click Finish.

It imports correctly. Even if I just open excel and drag the text file into the Excel window, it opens correctly.

Now, if you told it the delimiters should be commas, you might get it all jammed together in one column. I'm not sure what the issue is here, but from looking at it the file seems to be a correct tab-delimited file and my version of Excel doesn't have any issues.

that's exactly what I'm doing, but with excel 2000 and 2003.. and several other people have reported the exact same results to me..

can anybody confirm with something other than 2007?