Opening and Saving Files: Text Files

1. Opening a Text File

Use File → Open and choose Text from the File of type list. Then specify additional text file options as described below.

Cell separator A single character used to separate cells in one line.
Fixed cell widths A comma‑separated list of fixed cell width values, e.g.:
10,30,15,40
If fewer widths are specified than needed, remaining cells are assumed to contain 1024 characters.
Quoting symbol

A symbol used to delimit cells containing separator characters.
Cells containing quoting symbols, separators, or newline characters must be enclosed in quoting symbols. Inner quoting symbols must be doubled.

If you need to open a text file that does not conform to this standard, consider disabling quoting or specifying a unique quoting symbol that does not occur in the file.

Escaping symbol

A symbol used to mark the occurrence of a single byte value specified as a two‑digit hexadecimal number preceded by the x letter. Examples:
\x66
\xA0\x45
Escaping symbols not representing such sequences must be doubled.

Escaping can be selected when opening a text file. When saving, GS-Calc always uses quoting and UTF‑8 encoding. Use escaping only if you are certain the file uses this encoding method.

Note:
If a text file is to be opened entirely as textual data (no number or formula parsing), clear all parsing options below. All worksheet columns created from that file will automatically use the Text style.

To remove the Text style and enable number/formula parsing, select the column and either:

  • press Del, then choose “Formatting”, or
  • choose any numeric style on the formatting toolbar
Formula conversion Determines whether loaded text strings should be evaluated and converted to formulas.
The default No Conversion treats all cells as text labels.
Convert plain text to numbers Converts plain numeric text strings to numbers.
Only unformatted numbers can be converted.
If converted numbers use decimal points, this has to be period (.).
Parse formatted numbers (thousands, currency, etc.) Converts formatted numeric strings (e.g., thousands, currency, fractions, parentheses) to numbers.
By default, period (.) along with generic numeric and currency settings are used to parse such numbers. Select the "Use system regional settings" option if you want to use numeric and currency settings currently selected in your system regional settings.
Convert dates and times/periods to serial numbers Converts text strings representing dates and/or times into date serial numbers. By default, generic EN date/time settings are used to parse dates (slash, month names, the month-day order). Select the "Use system regional settings" option if you want to use date/time settings currently selected in your system regional settings.
Preserve parsed cell formatting Specifies whether cells containing numbers, dates and times (after parsing) should retain their original data styles when displaying in sheet cells.
Use system regional settings (dates, formatted numbers) Choose this option if you want to use numeric settings (for formatted numbers and currencies) and date/time settings currently selected in your system regional settings instead of the generic (EN) ones used by GS-Calc by default.
Encoding Specifies the text encoding: UTF‑8, UTF‑16, ANSI/ISO/OEM.
Code page Specifies the character code page if the ANSI/ISO/OEM encoding is selected.
Maximum columns in sheet By default, GS-Calc warns if a text file contains more than 16K columns. If enabled, additional sheets are created automatically to load columns beyond 16K.

You may specify any splitting limit from 1 to 16384 columns.
Text files may contain up to 1 million columns, split into 16384‑column sheets.

If multiple sheets are created, saving them back as a text file prompts for a new ZIP64 archive name. To reopen such archives, choose: Text Archive (*.zip).
Maximum rows in sheet Same as above, but for rows. You may split text files into multiple sheets with any number of rows from 1 to 32 million.
Auto-fit column widths After loading a given text file, GS-Calc will adjust column widths to show all cell contents without clipping.
Use these settings for text files in the zip archive This option is displayed only when you're opening a zip file containing text files to be loaded as separate sheets and if that zip archive was not saved previously by GS-Calc, which by default stores in that zip all text open/save parameters as a short XML file.
If it's off or if no such XML file can be found in the zip, GS-Calc will ask you to confirm text parameters for each loaded file from that zip archive.
Load predefined settings Clicking this button displays a menu that lets you manage a list of named text open/save settings used previously.
These are global GS-Calc settings. This enables you to populate quickly all the above fields and checkboxes when re-using given text file types.

Open Text File dialog

2. Saving a Text File

GS-Calc saves existing text files opened for editing automatically using the same parameters that were used to open them, so no other "Save" dialog box is displayed.

To save a new text file or to change its text parameters, use File → Save As and choose Text from the File of type list. Then you can specify the same text file options as listed above.

By default, choosing:

Text (*.txt, *.csv, *.tsv)

saves only the current sheet as a standalone text file.

To save all sheets at once, choose the type:

Text Archive (*.zip)

This instructs GS‑Calc to save all sheets as text files into a single ZIP64 or ZIP32 *.zip archive, along with a short XML file or files containing text parameters for future automatic loading and saving.

When saving ZIP text archives, row‑splitting options are disabled.

Save Text File dialog

3. Related Topics

GS-Calc *.gsc and ODF *.ods files
Excel (*.xlsx) files
PDF files
Text *.zip archives
GS-Base (*.gsb) files
dBase/Clipper/FoxPro files
SQLite (*.db) files
MySQL (*.sql) files