Working Around 240 Character PRN Field Width Limit

[Confused_in_Houston]

I have a working copy of a load file that I have built in Excel. There are
13 columns of data and the sum of the column widths is 251 characters. The
last column (120 characters in width) is being dropped from text-view when
the PRN is being saved.

Is there a way to save the Excel file as a txt file and have it "honor" the
spaces between characters? I've tried concatenation of the 13 columns but
the spaces "go away" in Excel.

I researched on here and found a SCARY macro that I have absolutely no
skills to interpret or apply. The macro was to address this problem but I
can't use it. Other than that, I've seen no suggestions. Any and all help
is appreciated.

 

[Dave Peterson]

Saved from a previous post:

There's a limit of 240 characters per line when you do File|saveas and use .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]