How to Copy and Paste Delimited Tab Text in Excel

Normally, Excel can automatically detect tab-delimited text (also known as tab delimited) and paste the data into the correct separate columns. If this doesn’t work and everything you paste appears in only one column, either Excel’s delimiter is set to something else, or your text is using spaces instead of tabs. The Text to Cpumns tool in Excel can help you quickly select the right delimiter and paste the data into the correct columns.

Steps

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Copy (copy) all your tab-delimited text. Tab-separated text is a format that saves data in cells as a text file. Each cell is separated by the tab key, and each record is displayed on a separate line in the text file. Select all the text you want to copy in Excel and copy them to the clipboard.

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Select the cell in Excel that you want to paste. Select the upper, leftmost cell where you want your data to be pasted. Your data will fill the cells below and to the right of the selected cell.

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Paste data. In newer versions of Excel and in cases where your data is properly delimited by the tab key, cells will usually be filled with the desired data. Each place separated by the tab key will be directly converted into a new data cell. If all of your data appears in the same column, it’s likely that Excel’s delimiter has been changed from tab to something else, such as a comma. You can change it back to a tab using the Text to Cpumns tool.

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Select the entire column of data. If your tab-separated data isn’t pasted as expected, you can use Excel’s Text to Cpumns tool to reformat it properly. To do this, you need to select the entire column containing all pasted data. ^{[1] X Research Source}

You can quickly select an entire column by clicking the letter at the top.
You can just use the Text to Cpumns tool for each column in turn.

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Click the Data tab and then click “Text to Cpumns”. You’ll see this feature in the Data Tops section of the Data tab.

If you are using Office 2003, click on the Data tab and select “Text to Cpumns”.

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Select “Delimited” and click “Next”. This tells Excel to look for a specific mark to separate the cell.

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Select data separator. If your data is tab-separated, check the “Tab” box and uncheck all other cells. You can check different marks if the data is separated in a different way. In case your data is separated by multiple spaces instead of the tab key, check the “Space” and “Treat consecutive delimiters as one” boxes. Note that this can cause problems if there are non-column spaces in your data.

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Select the format of the first column. After selecting the delimiter, you can set the data format for each column being generated. You are allowed to choose “General”, “Text”, and “Date”.

Select “General” for numbers or both numbers and letters.
Select “Text” for text-only data, such as names.
Select “Date” for data written in the standard date format.

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Repeat the steps for the other columns. Select each column in the frame at the bottom of the window and set the format. You can choose to not include that column when converting to text.

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Complete the separation process. After formatting the columns, click Finish to apply the new delimiter. The data will be parsed into columns just like your Text to Cpumn setting.

Steps

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