Converting newspaper columns to tables

[Mike M]

I have received about 40 separate 1-page MS Word docs,
that are essentially tables, but manually created with
newspaper-style columns.

All of the entries are 1 line long, so you will have line
one in column 1 corresponding to line one in columns 2 &
3. There are approximately 35-50 lines per page. The
person who created these didn't even know about column
breaks so they just wrapped the next column to the top
with hard-returns, but I can fix that and align the
columns easily enough. However, once I do that, is there
a reasonable way to convert these 3 columns into a table
format without having to copy and paste each line of data
separately? I have tried the "convert text to table"
feature (set to 3 columns, auto-fit) but it just makes one
HUGE column, and where the paragraph marks were there is a
little square symbol in the text.

Perhaps I'm missing a setting. Perhaps I need to create
the table then copy & move the columns into the table one
at a time (tried that, but It just put each column into
one cell rather than individual lines).

When this is done, I'd like to combine all of the ~40
separate tables into one master table, and then get it
into Excel. If I can get to that point I'll write again
if I need more help. But any suggestions getting there
would be GREATLY appreciated.

Oh, if this has been asked previously my apologies, but
there were about 1500 pages of questions to browse through
on the MS site (Word general help / newbie help /
formatting help) and after about 20 min of browsing I
decided it would just be easier to ask and risk asking a
question that's come up before.

Mike

 

[Mike M.]

.... Just want to add, I am using MS Word 2000

These MS docs that I'm trying to turn into a table are a
CD collection, with column 1 being the song title, column
2 being the artist, and column 3 being the CD / track info

Mike

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Well, I think I can assure you that this particular question has not been
asked within my memory! Isn't it incredible what some people will do to
format text? I think I can help you, though, because I actually work with
something rather like this once a month (though only two columns). Here's
how I would attack it.

1. Reduce the number of empty paragraphs to one paragraph between columns
(just so you can keep track of where each column begins), and then reformat
the document to a single column.

2. Select the first block of text and replace ^p with ^t^l. This replaces
each paragraph mark with a tab character and line break. Set a tab stop that
will clear the longest list item.

3. Pressing Alt, select the second column and drag it up to the right of the
first tab character. This will give you two tabbed columns.

4. Select that block of text and replace ^l with ^t^l. Again, make sure you
have a tab stop to the right of the longest list item.

5. Column-select (Alt+drag) the third column and drag it up beside the first
two. Note that the text you dragged was actually copied and is still below,
so you'll have to delete it.

6. Select the completed block and replace ^l with ^p. Then you can use
Convert | Text to Table.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Well, I think I can assure you that this particular question has not
been asked within my memory! Isn't it incredible what some people
will do to format text?

maybe this document is the result of an OCR ...? [never underestimate
mean users, I know, but ... ;-)]

2cents
..bob
...Word-MVP