word 2000 text formatting question

[NaiLBoMB]

i have a rather large amount of data arranged into 3 columns in word. the columns are three peices of data that are relative to each other (like, name address, postcode for example) and there are 27017 lines of this. the columns are formatted by tab spaces, is there a quick way without doing it all by hand, that i can convert this formatting into a table with three columns, preseving all the data?

"I don't need intelligent drugs Tom, because I don't know what they are."

-Space Ghost

 

[TSSTechie]

Hi
Highlight all of the data, click on table, move to convert and choose 'text to table'.
Hope this helps

 

[NaiLBoMB]

ok, i tried that, but it just puts the data which looked like this:

item 1 item2 item3
item 1 item2 item3
item 1 item2 item3
item 1 item2 item3
item 1 item2 item3

into lines in horizontal cells like this.

__________________________________________
|item 1 item2 item3 |
|item 1 item2 item3 |
|item 1 item2 item3 |
|item 1 item2 item3 |

but i need to format them into

__________________________________________
|item 1 | item2 | item3 |
|item 1 | item2 | item3 |
|item 1 | item2 | item3 |
|item 1 | item2 | item3 |
|item 1 | item2 | item3 |

"I don't need intelligent drugs Tom, because I don't know what they are."

-Space Ghost

 

[TSSTechie]

Hi

You need to make sure that the number of columns to be created is 3. It seems that you only have 1 selected. This can be selected in the window having clicked on convert - text to table

Hope this helps

 

[NaiLBoMB]

thats what i did the first time, and it ended up like this:

__________________________________
|item 1 | item1 | item 1 |
|item 2 | item2 | item 2 |
|item 3 | item3 | item 3 |
__________________________________
|item 1 | item1 | item 1 |
|item 2 | item2 | item 2 |
|item 3 | item3 | item 3 |
__________________________________
|item 1 | item1 | item 1 |
|item 2 | item2 | item 2 |
|item 3 | item3 | item 3 |

"I don't need intelligent drugs Tom, because I don't know what they are."

-Space Ghost

 

[Dreamboat]

Turn your show/hide button on. It looks like a backward P. You say there's tabs between your "columns". If there are MORE THAN ONE tab EVER, select all this data. Hit Ctrl+H. In find WHAT, type:

^t^t

and in replace WITH, type:

^t

Hit Replace all until zero replacements are made.

Now, select only these lines of text, and no more. Hit Table-Convert text to Table. Use 3 columns and TAB character as delimiter.

Hope that helps.

Anne Troy
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