boortz@sics.se (Kent Boortz) (08/04/90)
A friend has written in a lot of tables in Word Perfect documents. She did not know what a spreadsheet program was at that time but now she does. Excel can read tabdelimited data and that is how it is written in, with a return after each row. So far so good. I tried to export one of the documents to TEXT. All her tabs were gone, not even a space between the data. She used decimal tabs when she typed it in. I selected all the text in the original document and replaced all the decimal tabs on the ruler with ordinary ones. THIS DID NOT CHANGE ANYTHING! I tried to use replace, and replace the decimal tab with ordinary ones. Strange result and they did not go away. Tried to save the document in WORD format. WP crashed every time i tried. At last I found a solution. Create a new document in Page Maker, place the WP document on a page and copy the text to the scrap board. A rather long way to go..... Do you have a solution? (or am I just stupid to think that any tab in WP should translate to an ordinary tab in a TEXT document or when I copy text from WP to a spreadsheet). Maybe she has to type it all in again... Thanks! Kent Boortz boortz@sics.se
jness@ub.d.umn.edu (Joel Ness) (08/07/90)
In article <1990Aug4.154734.29819@sics.se> boortz@sics.se (Kent Boortz) writes: > >A friend has written in a lot of tables in Word Perfect documents. She >did not know what a spreadsheet program was at that time but now she >does. Excel can read tabdelimited data and that is how it is written in, >with a return after each row. So far so good. > >I tried to export one of the documents to TEXT. All her tabs were gone, >not even a space between the data. She used decimal tabs when she typed it >in. I selected all the text in the original document and replaced >all the decimal tabs on the ruler with ordinary ones. THIS DID NOT CHANGE (text deleted) >(or am I just stupid to think that any tab in WP should translate to an >ordinary tab in a TEXT document or when I copy text from WP to a spreadsheet). > >Kent Boortz >boortz@sics.se Nope, you're right. WP is quite braindead in how it handles tabs other than plain ones - it doesn't really insert ascii tabs in the file. I hadn't noticed to problem with saving as text until you pointed it out and it sure does just save it as one long string without any tabs. An alternative somewhat shorter than importing to PageMaker would be to save as MSWord 3.0 (tabs get converted to real tabs), open again, and then save as text. Hope this (and all sorts of other things) are improved in version 2.0. Many of my support headaches are due to just this sort of WP silliness. From what I've heard, 2.0 does promise to be a big improvement. Joel Ness INTERNET: jness@ub.d.umn.edu Information Services BITNET: JNESS@UMNDUL University of Minnesota, Duluth
domo@tsa.co.uk (Dominic Dunlop) (08/07/90)
In article <1990Aug4.154734.29819@sics.se> boortz@sics.se (Kent Boortz) writes: >A friend has written in a lot of tables in Word Perfect documents. She >did not know what a spreadsheet program was at that time but now she >does. Excel can read tabdelimited data and that is how it is written in, >with a return after each row. So far so good. > >I tried to export one of the documents to TEXT. All her tabs were gone, >not even a space between the data. She used decimal tabs when she typed it >in. I selected all the text in the original document and replaced >all the decimal tabs on the ruler with ordinary ones. THIS DID NOT CHANGE... Yes. Trying to get WordPerfect (1.0.3) for the Mac to do columns and tables feels to me like trying to reverse a trailer round a corner: its far more difficult and error-prone than it has any right to be. I've had the same problem in the past, and didn't arrive at a solution. However, a little playing around suggests that if you replace all ``start align'' codes with tabs BEFORE saving the file as text, the result is pretty much what you need. Don't mess with the ruler: it's not necessary. When's 2.0 liable to hit the streets, anybody? -- Dominic Dunlop
jness@ub.d.umn.edu (Joel Ness) (08/10/90)
In article <1990Aug7.110813.3007@tsa.co.uk> domo@tsa.co.uk (Dominic Dunlop) writes: > >When's 2.0 liable to hit the streets, anybody? >-- >Dominic Dunlop Just talked to the WP folks. They say "End of September". Hope it's as nice as it sounds. Joel Ness INTERNET: jness@ub.d.umn.edu Information Services BITNET: JNESS@UMNDUL University of Minnesota, Duluth