Export text from tabbed field

[Phil Davis]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Brenstein" <rjb at rz.uni-potsdam.de>
To: <metacard at lists.runrev.com>
Sent: Friday, January 03, 2003 5:26 AM
Subject: Re: Export text from tabbed field


> >>Signe Marie Sanne wrote:
> >>
> >>>  Is it possible to export a field with fixed tab stops to a text file
> >>>  with the tab stops being maintained in the file? I have used: put fld
> >>>  1 into url tUrl.
> >>
> >>Try:
> >>
> >>   put fld 1 into url ("file:"&tUrl)
> >
> >Thanks for the prompt reply.
> >I already had "file" implemented in the path (just omitted it in my 
> >posting). The text file (both in Word and plain text) shows tabs, 
> >but instead of being placed in a fixed place, the tabs all seem to 
> >just introduce a certain number of spaces where the tab stops are, 
> >but since the text in each column varies, the original columns in 
> >the fields are not maintained. Other clues?
> >
> 
> That is normal. A tab is simply a character that says 
> hop-to-the-next-tab-stop. What that means is dependent on the program 
> opening the file. Word by default has typewriter tabs 
> (evenly-spaced). If you select the text and set custom tabs, then you 
> get the columnar alignment that you seem to expect, although it may 
> still may not work as you expect if some text is long enough that 
> requires wrapping. In that case, you can use the convert text to 
> table tool which will use tabs to break each line into cells of a 
> table.

If you need a completely automated solution, it's probably possible to get the tabstops of your field, convert them to Word tab positions (this would require knowledge of Word's tab positioning scheme), and put the new tab position info into a VBA script that you create in Rev; then save the VBA script as a file, and run it from within Word. It could open your text file and apply the info to the tab bar of your file. At least it seems possible on a conceptual level, especially since I'm not the one struggling with it! ;o) I do hope you find something that works adequately.

Phil Davis


> 
> Robert
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