How to Save an Excel Spreadsheet As Pipe Delimited

Many businesses and individuals use Microsoft Excel for manipulating and managing complex data. Excel is a powerful tool for sorting, modifying and altering data; used correctly, it can format the data for use in other applications. Often, spreadsheet users may want to use a pipe (|) punctuation mark as a delimiter between data points in a spreadsheet they can transfer to another program. Creating a comma-separated file from Excel is simple; a pipe-delimited file requires additional work outside of Excel.

Things You'll Need

• Microsoft Excel

Instructions

1. Click "Start," then select "Settings," then "Control Panel." Click on "Regional and Language Options."

2. Click on the button labeled "Customize" and highlight the data in the field labeled "List Separator." Type the pipe delimiter "|" in the field replacing the previous list separator.

3. Click "OK" on the window titled "Customize Regional Options." Click "OK" on the window titled "Regional and Language Options."

4. Open Excel and create the content you wish to save in the pipe-delimited format.

5. Click on "File" on the Excel menu bar then select the option "Save As."

6. Input the name for the file in the text field labeled "File name" and select the value "CSV (Comma delimited)(*.csv)."

7. Click on the button labeled "Save" to save the file to your computer as a pipe-delimited format.

Tips & Warnings

• Reset the list separator value once you have completed saving the pipe-delimited file.

References

• MSDN Website: How to Convert Excel File to .Dat File

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish