Excel doesn't provide any obvious way to insert the contents of a text file into a worksheet. Until Excel 2000, all versions of Excel required you to open the text file separately, then copy and paste the data to your worksheet.

Excel 2000 (and later) makes the process much easier. You might expect to see this feature on the File menu, but instead you select Data, Get External Data, Import Text File. This command calls up a dialog box in which you select a text file, whereupon the Text Import Wizard lets you specify how Excel should import the data. Finally, in the Import Data dialog box, you indicate the desired worksheet destination.

Excel imports the text file as a database query, which you can update if the data in the text file changes (select Data, Refresh Data to do so). To import the file as static data, click Properties in the Import Data dialog, and remove the check mark from the "Save query definition" box.

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