Part IV: Managing and Analyzing Data
■ (^) Did you check for duplicate or missing rows?
■ For text data, are the words consistent in terms of case?
■ (^) Did you check for spelling errors?
■ Does the data contain any extra spaces?
■ (^) Are the columns arranged in the proper (or logical) order?
■ Are there any cells blank that shouldn’t be blank?
■ (^) Did you correct any trailing minus signs?
■ Are the columns wide enough to display all data?
Exporting Data
This chapter began with a section on importing data, so it’s only appropriate to end it with
a discussion of exporting data to a file that’s not a standard Excel file.
Exporting to a text file
When you choose File ➪ Save As, the Save As dialog box lets you choose from a variety of
file formats. The three text file types are as follows:
CSV: Comma-separated value files
TXT: Tab-delimited files
PRN: Formatted text
We discuss these file types in the sections that follow.
CSV files
When you export a worksheet to a CSV file, the data is saved as displayed. In other words,
if a cell contains 12.8312344 but is formatted to display with two decimal places, the value
will be saved as 12.83.
Cells are delimited with a comma character, and rows are delimited with a carriage return
and line feed.
If you export a file using the Mac variant, rows are delimited with a carriage return only (no line feed character).
Note that if a cell contains a comma, the cell value is saved within quotation marks. If a
cell contains a quotation mark character, that character appears twice.
TXT files
Exporting a workbook to a TXT file is almost identical to the CSV file format described ear-
lier. The only difference is that cells are separated by a tab character rather than a comma.