Humanly Read Tab Delimited TXT Files

Question

Normally I work with Comma Delimited CSV files, and whenever I need to scan over the data, I just open it up in Excel, and there it is, organised neatly into columns.

However, on this occasion I have been given a tab delimited text file. If I open it up in MS Notepad, because the values and headings are all variable and different widths, the data is very disjointed. Easy for a computer to read. Not easy for me to read!

So far I have tried Notepad, Excel and Sublime Text.

Is there a program that will display a tab delimited text file, organised into humanly readable columns?

Thanks

Per the close reasons, "Questions asking us to recommend or find a book, tool, software library, tutorial or other off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow" — LittleBobbyTables - Au Revoir, Feb 23 '15 at 15:19

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 20 '14 at 11:52

0

I hope notepad++ can help you here.

Please try: http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

answered Nov 20 '14 at 11:52

Amer Zafar

419
2
11

Notepad++ didn't work, unfortunately. After doing some reading, it seems there might be some long workarounds with plugins and such, but effort I don't really want to go into. I have managed to get it working in Excel though, just requires a few tweaks. – user1100149 Nov 20 '14 at 12:12

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 20 '14 at 12:19

OK, so it just required a few tweaks in Excel for it to format correctly.

I first changed the file extension from .txt to .csv and followed this guide:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-convert-delimited-text-files-into-excel-spreadsheets/

In short:

Open the file in MS Excel.
Highlight the first column (which is where all your data will be)
Select the Data tab in the File menu.
Select Text to Columns and follow the Wizard

Humanly Read Tab Delimited TXT Files

2 Answers2