How to achieve test tab delimited files from xlsx files please

For txt you can only save to .csv. This gives you various choices but remains csv whereas I need a true txt file. You can save BACK from csv to .txt, but then a load of “”" marks and even , rows appear in the list of texts, and in one case the program removed all the text commas from my entries!

Any pointers would be welcome.

Hi Helen,

from your question it is not completely clear what you have and what you really want. So I describe two cases.

First case:

You are having a .ods or .xlsx spread sheet document wanting to export it into an ASCII text file that looks like a table.
Choose “save as”, select file type .csv and give a new file name. Pressing “save” a pop-up window “Export of text files” appears. If you tick the box “fixed column width” on the lower left, the export function generates a .csv file which does not contain delimiters but pads your table with blanks to the respective appropriate fixed width column size. Rename the resulting file to .txt you are done. (You may import this text file into Calc at any time using the fixed width feature for importing .csv text files into a sheet.) Be careful, only the current sheet will be exported to your text file.

Second case:

You already have a csv file containing delimiters and text “” marks. Open this file with LO and use the appropriate import settings to get a nicely shaped sheet from your .csv table. If you now would try to save it immediately as text again, the “Export of text files” pop-up does not appear, because the file is already in text format. So save it as .ods file (convert it to .ods format) first and then save again as .csv. Now the description for the first case should apply.

Hope I met your problem.

Karl

HI Karl Thanks very much for the suggestions and I will experiment with them

However my actual situation is that I must deliver a .txt file, and it must be text tab delimited. The “working” file format is an xlxs with three colums (size doesn’t matter) containing text, but the “final” is a .txt file with tab delimiters, I don’t have a choice in the matter. I cannot deliver a .csv, their system won’t read it. It will ultimately be used in a database over which I have no control or knowledge!

tx

Update: regrettably neither suggestion produces a solution … the first one dumped all the numbers and left nice clean columns with most of the text missing! The second one didn’t give me any of the save options as I was only able to work in Calc, which I think must be correct as this is a spreadsheet. I think I must start again from scratch and try and make it clearer what I am trying to achieve. Thank you!