Viewing Control Characters

[PVodola]

Hi,

I want to view and edit control characters such as <tab> and <LF> in text
files that I import into Excel 2007 on a Windows XP laptop. I'm not able to
view or edit them even though I can verify their presence using LEN and CODE
functions. It works on Excel 2007 on an XP desktop at work. The control
characters show up as boxes or boxes around symbols. Is there a setup option
on XP, Office, or Excel that I need to select?

Thanks,
Paul

 

[Gary''s Student]

Try the Terminal font. For example:

=CHAR(1)

should display a smilelyface.

 

[PVodola]

Thanks for the reply. The problem is independent of font. It seems to be more
fundamental than that. In fact, the preview box of the text import wizard at
work shows tabs as boxes while my home computer doesn't show them at all. I'm
running the same (Enterprise) version of Office 2007 in both places. I fail
to see the tabs at home on both XP Home and Windows 7 Home premium. I think
it's an Office/Excel setting that I can't find.

Paul

 

[Paul Vodola]

Gary''s Student,

You're right. I made a bunch of incorrect observations about Excel and my
issue. But I'm still looking for the simpler setup I have at work. I start
with a 3x3 sheet which is save as a tab-delimited text file. Then open it in
the text import wizard. The tabs appear as boxes in the preview pane.Turn
off the tab delimiter option. and complete the coversion. The tabs have a
symbol representation in both the cells and formula bar with Calibri font,
which sees a different font than the preview pane of the wizard. The Office
Button | Excel Option shows that Excel is using the Body Font. This is the
setup I want.

At home, I have these same default settings. In the text import preview
pane, all tabs are invisible. Letters are adjacent. The cells and formulabar
also look adjacent but the tabs are present. The insertion point stops twice
in locations with the tab. If I edit such cells, the editor can get confused
about what letters are being altered and where they are. I fact, I can't
always place the insertion bar where I want to.

It's a minor inconvenience to change to Terminal Font and more of a puzzle
to me now.

Paul