Import or export text (.txt or .csv) files

There are two ways to import data from a text file with Excel: you can open it in Excel, or you can import it as an external data range. To export data from Excel to a text file, use the Save As command and change the file type from the drop-down menu.

There are two commonly used text file formats:

• Delimited text files (.txt), in which the TAB character (ASCII character code 009) typically separates each field of text.

• Comma separated values text files (.csv), in which the comma character (,) typically separates each field of text.

You can change the separator character that is used in both delimited and .csv text files. This may be necessary to make sure that the import or export operation works the way that you want it to.

Import a text file by opening it in Excel

You can open a text file that you created in another program as an Excel workbook by using the Opencommand. Opening a text file in Excel does not change the format of the file — you can see this in the Excel title bar, where the name of the file retains the text file name extension (for example, .txt or .csv).

1. Go to File > Open.

2. Select Text Files from the Open dialog box.

3. Locate and double-click the text file that you want to open.

   • If the file is a text file (.txt), Excel starts the Import Text Wizard. When you are done with the steps, click Finish to complete the import operation.

   • See: Text Import Wizard for more information about delimiters and advanced options.

   • If the file is a .csv file, Excel automatically opens the text file and displays the data in a new workbook.

     Note: When Excel opens a .csv file, it uses the current default data format settings to interpret how to import each column of data. If you want more flexibility in converting columns to different data formats, you can use the Import Text Wizard. For example, the format of a data column in the .csv file may be MDY, but Excel's default data format is YMD, or you want to convert a column of numbers that contains leading zeros to text so you can preserve the leading zeros. To force Excel to run the Import Text Wizard, you can change the file name extension from .csv to .txt before you open it, or you can Import a text file by connecting to it.

Related Guides

• Split text into different columns with the Convert Text to Columns Wizard
• Insert or delete cells, rows, and columns
• Find or replace text and numbers on a worksheet
• Collaborate on Word documents with real-time co-authoring
• OneDrive basics