Need to save a range as a text file

J

JonWestcot

Hi all:

I'm trying to find a replacement command in Excel for the Lotus 1-2-3
RangeExtract command. This command allowed the user to specify a range in
the worksheet and to then save just that information to a file. In my case,
I'm trying to save it to a text file.

The only thing I can think to do right now is to select the range, copy
it, create a new worksheet, paste the range into the new worksheet, and then
save the worksheet as a text file. But this seems like a giant kludge to
me. Does anyone have a better suggestion?

Thanks for bearing with all of my silly questions!

Jon
 
J

JonWestcot

Hi Dave:

Thanks for the link. His method seems sound, but, unfortunately, I need
everything to come into the text file as one long string with every column
lining up in the same position. I think my only -- and easiest -- solution
will be to create a temporary worksheet and print that.

Jon
 
D

Dave Peterson

That often is the most straightforward way.

Saved from a previous post:

There's a limit of 240 characters per line when you save as .prn files. So if
your data wouldn't create a record that was longer than 240 characters, you can
save the file as .prn.

I like to use a fixed width font (courier new) and adjust the column widths
manually. But this can take a while to get it perfect. (Save it, check the
output in a text editor, back to excel, adjust, save, and recheck in that text
editor. Lather, rinse, and repeat!)

Alternatively, you could concatenate the cell values into another column:

=LEFT(A1&REPT(" ",5),5) & LEFT(B1&REPT(" ",4),4) & TEXT(C1,"000,000.00")

(You'll have to modify it to match what you want.)

Drag it down the column to get all that fixed width stuff.

Then I'd copy and paste to notepad and save from there. Once I figured out that
ugly formula, I kept it and just unhide that column when I wanted to export the
data.

If that doesn't work for you, maybe you could do it with a macro.

Here's a link that provides a macro:
http://google.com/[email protected]
 
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