I'm on a mac. A colleague sent me an Excel file (.xls) which I looked at in Excel 2011. It looks fine. I would like to save the file in some sort of text format, so that I can open Terminal and look at it in less. I realize that the columns won't align nicely, that's fine. What I don't want are all the weird characters that show up (from differently formatted line endings, etc). I've tried saving as "Tab delimited text," but that has the problem with the line endings. Which format should I use?
posted by bluefly on Aug 16, 2012 - 9 answers

I want to do something ridiculously simple in Excel that doesn't seem to be possible. Please tell me that's not true. [more inside]
posted by cincinnatus c on Feb 10, 2012 - 17 answers

How can I find common words in two (or more) lists? [more inside]
posted by pantufla on Dec 13, 2010 - 9 answers

How can I compare the text in two excel cells for common terms? [more inside]
posted by pantufla on Dec 6, 2010 - 5 answers

I have: An excel spreadsheet with a bunch of emails. I need: A self-updating text string that can be copy-pasted into an email TO: Field. I know about C1&","&D1 but is there a way for the list to be automatically updated when I or subtract an email, without specifically having to tell the formula to look in the newly added row? [more inside]
posted by amethysts on Mar 23, 2010 - 7 answers

I have hundreds of text strings entered through a form in a Google Spreadsheets which look like 4*3 9*2 17*3 22 37*4 52. I can easily substitute " " for "+" and concatenate a "=" in front =4*3+9*2+17*3+22+37*4+52. Now I have a text string which looks like a formula but isn't one. How can I make Google Spreadsheets interpret this string as a formula? [more inside]
posted by Akeem on Mar 12, 2009 - 3 answers

Excel is chapping my hide. I have a comma-delimited .csv which contains quote-demarcated text fields. The source of my never-ending joy is the recurrent use of inch-marks and commas within the textfields. Right this way... [more inside]
posted by mwhybark on Feb 25, 2009 - 18 answers

I have no clue what I am doing in Excel, so this is going to be a bit hard to explain, but hopefully somebody can help me here. I want to give Excel some text, and have it output a string. Let me explain. [more inside]
posted by B(oYo)BIES on May 13, 2008 - 4 answers

MS Excel help, please. I'm creating a multi-sheet workbook, and cells on one sheet will contain the same text as cells on another sheet. Is there a way I can avoid having to enter the text on each sheet? Is there a function that will automatically copy text from a cell on one sheet to a cell on another sheet?
posted by msacheson on May 15, 2007 - 7 answers

Hi, hoping some MS Excel or HTML wizards can help me out with this. The goal is as follows; format a list of domain names so I can publish them on a webpage with hyperlinks to their individual addresses (currently they are all in Excel with each domain occupying a single cell in a single row; they are currently formatted like this: "domain.com"). There are just to many to go through and add this to each one. [more inside]
posted by Jhaus on Feb 21, 2006 - 8 answers