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When I imported one of your ASCII files into Excel, the first column looks wrong. Why?

The first column is best if formatted as text. The following revises the instructions given earlier:

In Newsletter No 35, I gave the steps to import an ASCII file from the Data Files page of my website to Excel. It has been brought to my notice that the first column (date) is tidier if specified as text. The revised instructions are as follows:

In Excel 2002 (XP) you do this:

Data

Import External Data

Import Data

Browse to the folder you have saved the ASCII file into

Set Files of Type to All Files

Double click on the ASCII file

Tick Text for Column A. Leave the other columns as General.

Finish

If it is one of the advance-decline files (asxad or nysead), or the New High-New Low file (asxhl), you will need to construct an additional column accumulating the ADV-DECL column before you plot the chart.

Keyword:

DATA