Excel spreadsheet issue?

[Andrew Mammoliti]

Hi guys sometimes my customers send text files with excel. Thing is they are usually one line, two lines or more, when selecting the text from excel it grabs all the empty cells around the text, which I dont want. I just want the text only, to copy and paste into my eng. software. Is there an easy way to do this in excel? Select text only?

Thanks Andrew

[Joe Pelonio]

Sounds like you don't have the same font in your engraving software so it takes the whole area as a bitmap. if you have adobe acrobat you can probably export to a pdf and open that in your engraving program.

[Andrew Mammoliti]

Hi Joe, I don't think that's it. I can select all the text and copy it in. It's just that when i select all the text it grabs all the empty cells in the box too, and copies all those as well, which I don't want.

[Robert Walters]

Andrew,

If the spreadsheet contains empty columns, just right click on the column header and hit delete, then select and copy.

[Jiten Patel]

Andrew,

Not really sure what you mean by text on one line or two? Do you mean that there is text in different cells? or in just one?

If it is just one cell then double click on the cell, and highlight all the text, copy and paste into wherever you need it....

If it is multiple cells, then go to file, save as and save your file and change the "file as type" drop down to Text (tab delimited)(*.txt) and follow the instructions. This should create a bog standard text file which you can open and freely copy the text from without the contraints of cells.

Hope that helps.

[Andrew Mammoliti]

here is the file, see what you can do with it?

test.xls


I want it to lool like this when it's done, copy and paste into notepad. edit select all in windows notepad, and see if you see the blue cells?


line 1
line 2
line 3

line 1
line 2
line 3

and so on, all the way down. with no empty blue cells.

[Mike Null]

That pastes fine into notepad but you have to edit from there. I'm using Office 2007.

I think this can be done with the Corel print merge feature but maybe somebody who uses it can be of more help.

[Prashun Patel]

I'm still having trouble understanding you.

However, I do see that what the creator of the file has done is put 3 lines of text in each cell by just using a lot of spaces between the lines instead of a carriage return ('alt-enter').

If you do an edit-replace, you can replace all instances of two spaces " " with nothing "". This will put everything in each cell on a single line. Then at least when you copy into notepad, you only have to hit enter once instead of deleting a whole bunch of spaces.

[Mike Null]

Prashun

I think what you've suggested may also open the door to "print merge".

[Andrew Mammoliti]

I'm still having trouble understanding you.

However, I do see that what the creator of the file has done is put 3 lines of text in each cell by just using a lot of spaces between the lines instead of a carriage return ('alt-enter').

If you do an edit-replace, you can replace all instances of two spaces " " with nothing "". This will put everything in each cell on a single line. Then at least when you copy into notepad, you only have to hit enter once instead of deleting a whole bunch of spaces.

Can you call me to explain?

Thanks Andrew

[Daryl Gregg]

click on the top left cell you want.......hold down the shift key......click on the bottom right cell that you want.......copy

looks like whoever made the .xls file needs to be told not to use spaces & to put each line in a separate cell.

[Andrew Mammoliti]

that just copies everything including the empty blue cells.

I want it to look like it does in excel, colum by colum but when I select text it grabs empty cells. Select one plate for eg. then copy and paste in notepad, then select all and see what i mean.

[Joe De Medeiros]

It looks like they padded the lines with spaces, I don't know if this will work, but why not print it to PDF, then import it into corel draw, then ungroup it so you can move the blocks around. I'm not at home so I can't try it.

[Tom Delaney]

What they did in excel was use the 'word wrap' command in the menu bar and then surrounded it with an outline - making it appear that it is taking up more rows than necessary. How I fixed it was to go to column E and G and made them wider and taller (drag command on the row or column headings)- so that I could copy each box to a row larger. I then clicked on the single box provided, right clicked on that cell and choose 'copy'. Then move the cursor to the "E" or "G" cell that you made larger, right click and paste it in. If you look at the top of the menu bar - the 'word wrap' command is highlighted, click on that and it will turn it off. Then go to the center command and click that. The output will look exactly the same without the boxes - if you need them, just click the outline box and outline the cell. When done, delete the column between them (I put it there for clarity but it isn't needed). You should be all set. I DON"T LIKE EXCEL!!!

[Bill Cunningham]

Do what I do Andrew... Tell the customer you don't work with .xls.. and to send it as a single column, of one item per line, flush left in a plain text file.. Then, just cut and paste to corel, and change the font to what you need..
I've had customers send me horribly complex files for simple jobs in .xls .. It might be fine, if they want to pay me for the time it takes to re-edit everything. If they don't then they should send me something I can use.. There is probably a very simple way to use these things, but time is money, and I don't like to waste either, particularly if it's mine!