Convert xlsx to dat

**swmmr1928** · 03-11-2013, 06:27 PM

How can i convert the xlsx format to dat format?
I am going to use the dat file to open with a professional plotting software.

**MrShorty** · 03-13-2013, 07:42 AM

It depends on what a .dat format means. Assuming it is some kind of ascii text file, you may be able to use one of the save as text options. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ex...#_Toc326832889

If it is some other specialty file type, then you will have to figure out what the plotting software is looking for in its dat file and see if that can be implemented from Excel.

**swmmr1928** · 03-13-2013, 03:26 PM

Now, in the tutorial of the program I will use (ctioga2), they give an example .dat file, which this program recognizes. Is this a tab delimited ascii file?
To create a file in this format, would I comment out the first column (column titles)?
I have attached what I get when I save the active sheet as a tab delimited .txt
It is larger than the max size for .txt format, so I named it .zip. Please rename as .dat or .txt to view.
Thanks

**MrShorty** · 03-13-2013, 03:48 PM

they give an example .dat file, which this program recognizes. Is this a tab delimited ascii file?

It looks to me like a tab delimited text file. I do note that, when opened in Firefox or wordpad, it looks normal -- when opened in Notepad, the carriage returns/line feeds don't show up the same.

To create a file in this format, would I comment out the first column (column titles)?

It would depend on what the destination application is capable of. If it has certain requirements for what is in the first column, then, you will need to meet those requirements. My own experience with 3rd party graphing applications is that they don't really care what is in the first column. They allow you to pick which columns to plot against which columns and are very flexible in this way, so it would not matter whether or not you included the column titles or not. Since it is probably easier to create the text file with the first column included, I would leave it in.

**swmmr1928** · 03-13-2013, 04:42 PM

From ctioga2's tutorial,
"By default, ctioga2 acquires data using the text backend, that reads space-separated files (spaces also include tabs)."

So, would I need to save an excel sheet as "formatted text(Space-delimited) .prn Lotus space-delimited format."

**MrShorty** · 03-13-2013, 05:30 PM

My interpretation of that statement is that it is treating tab and space as equivalent delimiters.

FWIW, I also noted that the same page said that, if you tell it to do so, it can parse comma delimited files (CSV) as well. ctioga2 may have enough flexibility to work with a variety of delimiters.

Have you tried to use any of these files? At this point, I would suggest you create some test files. Maybe try tab delimited first, and see if you can get the desired results from the plotting program. Then try space delimited and/or comma delimited and see which format you find gives you the most reliable results with the least amount of effort.