convert excel to text file with delimiter

However, the reality is that those of us who aren’t too technically savvy, may find the conversion of a CSV file into a digestible Excel format a challenging task… especially when you have to deal with a pipe-delimited original. One of the main reasons why CSV files are widely-used online is because “plain-text makes the data easy to import into any Spreadsheet program or database regardless of what type of computer or software program you are using”. It is very common that, instead of commas, colons or pipes are used as delimiters. It may seem a bit strange as “CSV” originally stood for “comma-separated values” but don’t let the file extension’s semantics confuse you here. The most common format in which delimiter-separated files are saved is CSV.

This symbol then serves as a delimiter (or an indication of “the beginning or end of a data item”).

“Pipe” symbol is a vertical bar as in | or ¦ but more frequently the former.Ī “pipe-delimited file” is a file in which each line of represents a record, and separate fields are divided by the pipe.

Convert excel to text file with delimiter