Whenever possible we allow exporting data from PropReports in the Microsoft Excel file format (.xls). While Excel is a useful and powerful tool, its file format has certain limitations. For example, a worksheet is limited to only 65,536 rows by 256 columns. While this may sound like an incredibly large amount of space, our clients frequently run into issues with Excel when attempting to download all historical trade data or large reports. What further complicates using .xls files is the fact that they are binary, making it difficult to import the files into other systems. As a solution, our software sometimes exports data as text files with comma-separated values (.csv).
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- On the Data menu, point to Import External Data and then click Import Data to open the Select Data Source dialog box.
- In the Select Data Source dialog box, in the Files of type list, select Text Files.
- In the Look in list, navigate to the folder containing the file you want and select the text file you want to import.
Choose Delimited as the Original Data Type and click Next. The Text Import Wizard opens and guides you through a three-step process that ensures that the text is correctly split into separate worksheet columns by selecting delimiters in the files.
- Choose Delimiter and click Next.
- Check Comma.
Make formatting changes as necessary by selecting a column and then selecting an option under Column data format. For example, if there's a column of part numbers that you want to define as text instead of numbers, select the Text option. Click Finish when done.
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