Text edit formating

[thdrbird]

Hi,

I need to save my excel spreadsheet as a txt. so that data analysis software may read it. However, the formatting of the data must be slightly altered as follows:

pop1_1A 151 (9 spaces between pop1_1A and 151)

to

pop1_1A 151 (11 spaces between pop1_1A and 151)

The 151 value from the pop1_1A population must be separated by 11 spaces and not 9 spaces. How do I format for all these values. I do not know which program to use for this formatting. Seems simple but I need to do this for 52000 values.

Thanks!

thdrbird

*sorry the spacing is not adjusting accordingly when I save this post.

 

[Kaveman]

Once you have exported it open it in TextEdit find nine spaces and replace with 11 spaces. If there are other 9 spaces that you need to retain put a marker column in front with ! in it then find !,9 spaces with 11.

 

[thdrbird]

Thanks for the reply,

Unfortunately I cannot find the spaces when I export my file. Text edit seems to recognize spaces only when I do them myself, in other words, when I actually press the spacebar. It doesn't recognizes spaces otherwise...

 

[Kaveman]

maybe you should open the file in Pages and show invisibles to see just what is in that file. I've never had a problem with TextEdit. It sounds like a problem in the spreadsheet you shouldn't need to post process it, can't you fix the output field?

 

[thdrbird]

Thanks Kaveman,

What I ended up doing was saving the excel file under csv. format. With spaces separated by commas I was able to apply the find trick you suggested!

All the best!