Saving .csv files in Excel 2003

[cdelune]

I am downloading survey data from Qualtrics.com in .csv format into Excel
2003. The data appears to arrive perfectly, each item in its own column, but
once I save-and-close, then reopen the file, all the data is scrunched up at
the left-hand side of the page instead of distributed across the columns. I
have tried using the Data menu and specifying "commas" etc., but it doesn't
make any difference at all. Since in a week I will need to be able to keep
the files exactly as they are downloaded in order to perform data analysis on
them, I'm baffled. And I'm not technologically brilliant, just a doctoral
candidate who foolishly thought she could do a quantitative study and had no
idea Excel would act this way. My methodology committee members are fit to be
tied, because they think I'm stupid for sending them "garbage" although when
the file was closed it looked just fine, but opened as useless.

Please help!

Thank you.

Claire

 

[Pete_UK]

Hi Claire,

When you download the file, you should rename it to .txt rather
than .csv in Explorer(Windows will warn you about doing this, but just
click OK).

Then you should start Excel and use File | Open with filetype set to
All Files *.* and navigate to the folder containing your file -
highlight it and click Open.

This will take you automatically into the Data Import Wizard, which
comprises three phases. In the first phase you should select
Delimited, in the second phase you should click on comma as the
delimiter, and in the final phase you can identify each column in turn
and specify the way you want the data to be treated - if you have
numbers where leading zeros are important, for example, you can import
these as text to preserve the leading zeroes, or you might have some
dates in an odd format. Once you have set these up, you can click
Finish and your data should all be within separate columns. You might
need to adjust the column widths.

You can then use File | Save As to save the file as an Excel workbook
(and change the name if you want to).

Hope this helps.

Pete

 

[Pete_UK]

I've just noticed the heading you used for your thread. Perhaps you
opened the file okay and then saved it without changing the file type
- a new .csv file will have been saved, rather than an .xls file. Use
File | Save As and change the file type to Excel Workbook and then
save.

Hope this helps.

Pete

 

[cdelune]

Both posts were helpful and I tried both. The second was easier, having
fewer steps, but both solved the problem. As I said, I'm not experienced with
Excel but am glad the solution proved to be so simple!

Thank you!

Claire

 

[Pete_UK]

Thanks for feeding back - glad to be of help.

Pete