Re: [libreoffice-users] Calc Major Bug

Hi :)
Brilliant workaround :)  (as always).  I was going to suggest allowing it to 
open in Writer then select a tab space and use "Find&replace" to swap them to 
commas, then save the file as .csv rather than .txt.  Double clicking on a csv 
file should open it in Calc/Excel.  Much more messy but easier for many people 
to understand.  Regina's elegant answer is much better imo but it can be good to 
have choices :)
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)



________________________________
From: Regina Henschel <rb.henschel@t-online.de>
To: users@global.libreoffice.org
Sent: Sun, 19 June, 2011 20:58:46
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Calc Major Bug

Hi Andrew,

Andrew Foss schrieb:
> I need to open a tab delimited text file in Calc. I have done this many  times
> in Excel where you have to Open the File from inside Excel.  However, trying 
to
> open it with Calc launches Writer (ugh!!!). It seems  the programmers have 
gone
> to great lengths to stop one doing what you  wants and needs to do. Obviously,
> if one is inside Calc, any file one  tries to open should open inside Calc.
> That's a no brainer.

That is not so obvious. Word and Excel are different programs, Word can only 
handle text documents and Excel can only handle spreadsheets. But LibreOffice is 
not a collection of 6 programs (Writer, Calc, Draw, Impress, Math, Base), but is 
is one program, that offers different UIs for the different tasks.
Therefore a file, that looks like a text file will be opened in Writer as long 
as you don't determine explicitly what part to use. And a tab delimited text 
file contains nothing, which indicates that it is not a text file.

> How can I work around this problem? I tried tyo merge in the file but  that 
> also
> failed. I tried changing the file extension but LO ignored  that. I tried
> caopy/paste into Calc but Calc failed to put each tab  delimited field into a
> separate cell so that failed. Hopeless!

(1) Inside LibreOffice use File > Open. It does not matter where you are. It 
might be Writer or Impress or wherever. You get a file picker dialog.
(2) Select the file you want to open.
(3) The dialog has a drop-down list 'file type'. Open it and scroll down to the 
section where are the spreadsheet formats. Choose type 'Text CSV (*.csv,*.txt)'. 
Open.
(4) You get the import dialog. Set the needed parameters. Be careful about 
language, date and number formats.

Kind regards
Regina

-- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+help@global.libreoffice.org
In case of problems unsubscribing, write to postmaster@documentfoundation.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+help@global.libreoffice.org
In case of problems unsubscribing, write to postmaster@documentfoundation.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted