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 fields 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 → “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 text to numbers Converts plain numeric text strings to numbers.
Only unformatted numbers can be converted.
The decimal point is determined by Settings → Locales and system regional settings.
Parse formatted numbers Converts formatted numeric strings (e.g., currency, parentheses) to numbers.
Decimal point rules follow Settings → Locales and system regional settings.
Convert date/time strings Converts text strings representing dates and/or times into date serial numbers.
Retain styles Specifies whether cells containing numbers (after parsing) should retain their original data styles.
Encoding Specifies the text encoding: UTF‑8, ANSI 8‑bit, ISO/OEM.
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 | Text Archive (*.txt, *.csv, *.tsv, *.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.

Open Text File dialog

2. Auto‑Resizing Columns

To automatically resize columns when opening text files, enable:

Settings → Options → General → Auto‑fit column widths in imported files

(See Settings)

3. Saving a Text File

Use File → Save and choose Text from the File of type list. Specify the same text file options as when opening.

By default, choosing:

Text | Text Archive (*.txt, *.csv, *.tsv, *.zip)

saves only the current sheet as a standalone text file.

To save all sheets at once, specify a file name with the *.zip extension. This instructs GS‑Base to save all text files into a single ZIP64 archive, along with a short XML file containing text parameters for future automatic loading.

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

Save Text File dialog

4. Related Topics

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