How to Create an Excel File From Tab-Delimited Text?

Questions & Suggestions
1

I have a text file with 2 columns and 28 lines that I want to convert to the Ms Excel file format without opening Excel.

When I open an example Excel file with a ZIP tool, I see the following folder structure:

Screen Shot 2022-10-17 at 08.33.26
Screen Shot 2022-10-17 at 08.33.261236×298 34 KB

The files relevant here are sheet1.xml, that contains the cell addresses, and sharedStrings.xml that contains the data.

Screen Shot 2022-10-17 at 08.32.49
Screen Shot 2022-10-17 at 08.32.491920×1552 514 KB

Screen Shot 2022-10-17 at 08.34.19
Screen Shot 2022-10-17 at 08.34.192274×780 229 KB

What I am looking for is a generic way to convert text files with always 2 columns and n lines to an Excel file.

excel-example.xlsx.zip (18.7 KB)
aligned.txt.zip (4.5 KB)
aligned.xlsx.zip (11.0 KB)

2

Doesn't Excel open tab delimited files directly ?

3

That's very likely. But I don't want Excel to be launched.

My first attempt to remove 5 lines from sharedStrings.xml and adjust sheet1.xml has failed. Perhaps I made an error, perhaps there are other files that need a change. Will try to figure it out.

4

I don't think you're going to get there by hacking the file contents in that way. Try ssconvert (I think that's part of Homebrew's gnumeric package), Python and XlsxWriter, PowerShell, etc. There are many ways to write Excel files, a quick Google should throw up something that fits the tools you have available.

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