Remember that any changes you make in your regional settings can affect the operation of other programs in addition to Excel.

And, interestingly enough, if you open a CSV file that uses commas as a delimiter, then the Text Import Wizard will default to using a comma. Excel should default to using the semicolon as a delimiter.

Click OK to close the Region dialog box.Īt this point you can restart Excel and use the Text Import Wizard to import your file.

Click OK to close the Customize Format dialog box.

Change the List Separator setting to a semicolon.

Windows displays the Customize Format dialog box.

Click the 'Change Date, Time, or Number Formats' option, just under the Clock and Region heading.

Using the View By drop-down list (upper-right corner of the Control Panel), make sure you are viewing by Category.

Windows should show you that the best match for your typing is the Control Panel app.

Press the Windows key and immediately start typing 'con' (without the quote marks).

If you want to have Excel always recognize the semicolon as a delimiter, then you can make a change in the regional settings used by Windows. There are several different ways you could approach this issue, as described in the following sections. Bill has to uncheck Tab and check Semicolon each time he imports, so he is wondering if there is a way to change the default delimiter character. When he imports it into Excel using the Text Import Wizard, the default delimiter is a tab character. Repeat for the other unnecessary columns.Ĭlick Finish, and you’ll have a table containing only the pertinent data, with no additional cleanup required.Bill's solar inverter saves a daily file in which the fields are delimited by a semicolon ( ). The header will change from “General” to “Skip Column” (see the headers in the image below). Select the Formula column, then click Do not import column (skip). For example, if you only need the columns containing the gas name and the constant pressure specific heat, you can remove the other columns. You can select any of these columns and choose Do not import column (skip) to remove it from the data table.

Sometimes, data files contain more information than you need. You also have the option of omitting columns. Click each column in the preview window and set its type. You can also specify a date or text format. It treats numeric values as numbers, date values as dates, and everything else as text. The General format is appropriate for most data. The third window of the Text Import Wizard contains options to set a data format for each column.

Excel text import wizard delimeter