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Excel/Word Table Question...

PhilthePillPhilthePill Registered User regular
edited March 2007 in Help / Advice Forum
So my boss has given me this document to add some data in - it looks like it's a table in a word document, but it turns out it's not a table at all, just psuedo columns of data.

So I'm wondering if there's any way I can take columns of data from word, and easily put them into Excel, since I think whoever put together this document is a fool.

Obviously I could cut and paste everything seperately, but I was wondering if there was an easiler way? Surely someone has had this problem before?

Something like "drawing" a table around this data - then copying it across in one go?

I'm gonna sing the DOOM SONG now. DOOMY doom domm doom doom doom doom doom doom doomy doom-doom...
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    ThanatosThanatos Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    PhilthePill wrote: »
    So my boss has given me this document to add some data in - it looks like it's a table in a word document, but it turns out it's not a table at all, just psuedo columns of data.

    So I'm wondering if there's any way I can take columns of data from word, and easily put them into Excel, since I think whoever put together this document is a fool.

    Obviously I could cut and paste everything seperately, but I was wondering if there was an easiler way? Surely someone has had this problem before?

    Something like "drawing" a table around this data - then copying it across in one go?
    I did this once from Outlook, with something someone had arranged like that using Word. What worked for me (though I have no idea why) was just highlighting it all, copying, going to Excel, and hitting paste. It arranged everything exactly like I wanted it to, into columns and everything.

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    edited March 2007
    PhilthePill wrote: »
    So my boss has given me this document to add some data in - it looks like it's a table in a word document, but it turns out it's not a table at all, just psuedo columns of data.

    What's a "pseudo" column?
    How are the columns separated?

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    PhilthePillPhilthePill Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    They're seperated by tabs, and sometimes just a bunch of spaces it seems.

    And when I straight copy-paste it, it seems like half of it works, half of it doesn't.....

    Some things end up perfect, some columns are all over the place. Might just have to clean it up some. I was just wondering if there was an easier way...

    PhilthePill on
    I'm gonna sing the DOOM SONG now. DOOMY doom domm doom doom doom doom doom doom doomy doom-doom...
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    krapst78krapst78 Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Excel will usually only use <tab> as a default delimiter when copy and pasting data. You can manually change individual rows using the Data->Text to Columns function and specify space and commas as delimiters.

    If you save it as a text file and then open that file after starting up Excel (File->open->Files of Type->Text Files), it will give you the option of setting all the delimiters from the get go allowing you have the columns align properly.

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