Split up my file! Argh!

September 6, 2006 2:30 AM

I need help reformatting a .lst file for use in Excel (I think)...

If I have a .lst file which when opened displays each entry as something like:

number\Surname\Name\\ID\Birthdate\\AddressLine1\Line2\Line3\\\

and continues. Is it possible for me to do something which will put each of those values into a separate cell in the row?

There are about 10,400 rows and I'd rather not do it manually.

Or am I missing something obvious? Is there a better way to open .lst files of this sort?

Thanks in advance.

posted by knapah to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Shooting from the hip but paste it into Word, ctrl-H, replace // with , then ,, with ,

Save that as a csv file, then open with excel again as a CSV, no?
posted by prodevel at 2:38 AM on September 6, 2006

.lst files were common when snooping around in *nix FS's as generic, non-conforming log files or even SQL*Plus remnants...
posted by prodevel at 2:43 AM on September 6, 2006

argh step # two should be replace // with , per the '///' at the end or the entry.

doh
posted by prodevel at 2:45 AM on September 6, 2006

Thanks, this worked.

But I didn't realise that the // was symbolising an empty cell between them until after my first attempt.

All sorted now, thanks.
posted by knapah at 2:56 AM on September 6, 2006

For the record, you can actually do this entirely in Excel. Just open it, using File>Open. Excel will start the Text Import Wizard, and you can choose that the files is in delimited format with '\' as the delimiter. It's pretty good.
posted by smackfu at 6:42 AM on September 6, 2006

In my particular case, File>Open just opened it. No Text Import Wizard opened for some reason. But now that I know about it, I can look for why!

Thanks.
posted by knapah at 7:22 AM on September 6, 2006