How to import a txt file

[promytius]

Edit: Split from solved topic 41045

I just tried to do this and the items (0000000f - money) as an example, imports in as a scientific notation of that number with the "+e notation, no opportunity to set delimiters, and each cell seems to randomly set to left or right justify. Once in that scientific notation, you can't get the 'text' version back, and it is inconsistent, some are converted, some aren't.
What a mess. Thanks.

[John_Ha]

I just tried to do this and ... it is inconsistent, some are converted, some aren't.

Upload the txt file, or a portion of it showing the problem, for advice on which parameters to set. It is probably a problem in the txt file and Calc is merely following the instructions you are giving it.

As a new poster you will find much useful information in the User Guides. May I suggest you bookmark the pages.

Press F1 to access the Help screen and search for your problem

When a pop-up window opens, click the Help button for extensive help on that function - it is often more comprehensive than the manual.

See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for a description of differences and for why you should always work in, and save Writer files as .odt, Calc files as .ods, Impress files as .odp etc.

[promytius]

Ever since I first booted into Windows for Workgroups, Notepad has always been my goto for format stripping. I cannot remember a time when it did not work. It just does ASCII, no tabs no indents no italics, just straight ascii, which is why I wa shocked to see such a mess resulting from bringing in a notebook-handled text file.
It's not a real problem, I found two other free office suites that imported the text file without any issues. Thank you for your reply and good luck on your continuing to improve your product.

[robleyd]

It may be that when you imported the file, you missed checking an option in the Text Import filter, labelled Detect special numbers.