saved Excel as .txt then reopened - now I have squares

[MDG]

I have an Excel document that includes a list of e-mail addresses as well as
other data. This was saved as a .txt file. When reopened, the double quotes
that were inserted by Notepad are apparently not recognized by Excel and so
show up as squares. Not sure if Notepad separates columns using the double
quotes, but it seems that way and so I don't have much control over it. Any
thoughts about fixing this OR a way to resave so that the quotes don't show
up to begin with??

 

[Sri]

I have an Excel document that includes a list of e-mail addresses as wellas
other data. This was saved as a .txt file.  When reopened, the double quotes
that were inserted by Notepad are apparently not recognized by Excel and so
show up as squares.  Not sure if Notepad separates columns using the double
quotes, but it seems that way and so I don't have much control over it.  Any
thoughts about fixing this OR a way to resave so that the quotes don't show
up to begin with??

http://funwithexcel.blogspot.com/2009/04/writing-excel-contents-into-file-dat.html
use the macro in the above article to export the data to excel. Hope
this helps.

 

[Gord Dibben]

Could be the squares are linefeeds......which show as little squares until
you set the cells to wrap text.

If you want to get rid of them, select all cells and Edit>Replace

What: CTRL + j

With: whatever you like.....nothing or space or???

Replace all.

Or if you want to split the data at the linefeeds use Data>Text to
columns>Delimited by>Other.........Alt + 0010


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[Dave Peterson]

I've never seen anything like this.

I wonder if those double quotes were actually smart quotes (curly style that
MSWord uses).

If so, it might be easier to just fix those characters by making a couple of
changes inside NotePad.

 

[Dave Peterson]

I saved this from a previous post. You may find it useful:

Chip Pearson has a very nice addin that will help determine what that
character(s) is:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/CellView.aspx

Depending on what that character is, you may be able to use alt-#### (from the
number keypad) to enter the character into the Other box in the text to columns
wizard dialog.

In fact, you may be able to select the character (in the formula bar), and copy
it. Then use ctrl-v to paste into that text to columns Other box.

You may be able to use Edit|Replace to change the character--Some characters can
be entered by holding the alt-key and typing the hex number on the numeric
keypad. For example, alt-0010 (or ctrl-j) can be used for linefeeds. But I've
never been able to get alt-0013 to work for carriage returns.

Another alternative is to fix it via a formula:

=substitute(a1,char(##),"")

Replace ## with the ASCII value you see in Chip's addin.

Or you could use a macro (after using Chip's CellView addin):

Option Explicit
Sub cleanEmUp()

Dim myBadChars As Variant
Dim myGoodChars As Variant
Dim iCtr As Long

myBadChars = Array(Chr(##)) '<--What showed up in CellView?

myGoodChars = Array("")

If UBound(myGoodChars) <> UBound(myBadChars) Then
MsgBox "Design error!"
Exit Sub
End If

For iCtr = LBound(myBadChars) To UBound(myBadChars)
ActiveSheet.Cells.Replace What:=myBadChars(iCtr), _
Replacement:=myGoodChars(iCtr), _
LookAt:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, _
MatchCase:=False
Next iCtr

End Sub

If you're new to macros:

Debra Dalgleish has some notes how to implement macros here:
http://www.contextures.com/xlvba01.html

David McRitchie has an intro to macros:
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/getstarted.htm

Ron de Bruin's intro to macros:
http://www.rondebruin.nl/code.htm

(General, Regular and Standard modules all describe the same thing.)