asked on 10/4/2011

Is it possible to save an excel spreadsheet as a comma delimited file and skip a column on the spreadsheet?

I have an Excel spreadsheet with 2 columns, 1st column is a description of the data the user is to enter and the 2nd column is the data. I'm developing a utility to load only the data from column 2. I'm using sql loader and its too hard to try and describe each position for each data field exactly. I'd rather skip column 1 and have only column 2 data in the cvs file. Is the a way to format column 1 in Excel so it is not seen as data so when saving as a cvs file it is skipped?

Microsoft Excel

Last Comment

talahi

10/5/2011

sentner

10/4/2011

If this is a file that you will continually have to edit and save, then I'd create a new sheet, set the first cell to:
=sheet1!B1

And copy the cell down through the full column. Then you can just save the second worksheet as the CSV file, and it will only get the second column from the main sheet.

Alternatively, if this is a one-time thing, just save the file (as excel spreadsheet, to retain the current version), then delete the first column, and save as CSV.

talahi

10/4/2011

ASKER

Ok that requires some manual effort and makes automating tougher by creating a new sheet, writing to the first cell and copying the second column to this new sheet but doable.

I'd rather have the first column ignored somehow, if possible.

I'll wait a day to see if anyone has a way to do that before accepting this. Thanks.

SOLUTION