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h2. Importing Tab-Delimited (.txt) Files to Excel

# Open MS Excel
# Click on the Office button and choose Open.  The Open File dialog box will appear. Find the file you want to open.  You may need to navigate to the place where the file you want to open is stored.
# Highlight the file you want to open by clicking on it once. 
# Click the Open button in the bottom, right hand corner of the screen.
# The Text Import Wizard dialog box will appear.

h3. File Import Format

Use the following settings

* Original data type: Delimited
* Start Import at row: 1
* File origin: 20127: US-ASCII

*Click Next*

h3. Delimiters

Use the following settings:

* Delimiters: *Tab* (with Tab Delimited files.  Other file types and delimiters will vary)
* Text qualifier: *"*  You may need to change this.  Check the Data preview at the bottom of the screen.  The lines represent columns in an Excel file.  If the text is displaying properly, leave the Text qualifer field as-is.  If the text in each column is not displaying properly, choose a text qualifier from the pull down menu until the text in columns displays in the correct fashion.

*Click Next*

h3. Column Import Format

Use the following settings:
* Column data format: *Text*
The default import format is *General*.  This will convert numeric values to numbers, date values to dates, and remaining values to text.  This is a problem when importing GPS *latitude/longitude* points or long identifier strings from *Census data*, because the *General format* will convert the values in these columns to scientific notations.  To make sure *Excel* imports all columns as *Text*, do the following:

# In the Data Preview, click on the heading of the first column - it should say "General."
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# Scroll the bar over to the far, right side so that the last column in your data set displays.
# Hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and click the header of the last column.  Release the Shift key.  This should highlight all the columns. 
# In Column data format, click the radio button next to Text.  This will import all of the columns in text format.
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# Click Finish
# Save the newly imported file in Excel format to the desired location on your computer, USB flash drive or network drive.{multi-excerpt}