Re: converting .xls to delimited file

On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 11:22:46AM -0500, William Staniewicz wrote:

Is there any way to convert an Excel file (".xls")
to a delimited file? Maybe using sed?

You can export an excel file, from within excel, to tab delimited,
comma delimited, and many other formats. xls is a binary format, so
sed will not do the job.

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Try saving it as a .CSV file and then you can choose the delimiter you
want.

William Staniewicz wrote:

Excel can do this for you, if you use File -> Save As...
You will find various file types available. The list will vary according to
the completeness of your Excel installation. I believe that at minimum you
should have "tab delimited text" available, and probably csv as well (don't
use csv, it's evil). If I'm wrong, you'll need to get the MS Office CD and
reinstall Excel with more options checked...
If you want to import the result into Postgres, beware of CR characters, and
leading/trailing spaces in your fields. Excel will tolerate those spaces in
non text-type fields, but Postgres will not.