Converting Text to Tables in OpenOffice Writer

Tables are a good way to arrange data. Nice, structured, borders between each cell, etc.

The only question is, how do you get the data into a table format?

You can type from scratch, of course. You can painfully copy and paste.

Or if your data is set up right, with a tab or comma or other item separating the data into columns, you can just convert the text to a table.

Let's say you've got this. The arrows are tabs separating the "columns" of data.  (And let's say that it's actually about ten pages long, since this feature is a big timesaver but only if you've got a bunch of data to convert.) The blue is just artistic license.

Select it all.

Choose Table > Convert > Text to Table.

You'll see this window, where you can specify exactly what separates each column of data. It might be a tab, a comma, etc. Also set the options for headings, in the bottom part of the window. The example text here has headings, but yours might not.

 

If, through some sort of search-and-replace procedure, or for whatever reason, the % or & character separates each column, then you can specify that. As long as it's a keyboard character, you can specify it.

 

Click OK, and you've got your table.

 

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Comments

[Quelio]

Thanks! I was trying to figure out how to do this. I had copied and pasted a table from O.O. Writer to O.O. Calc for further sorting, yet I had no idea how to copy and paste the spreadsheet data back into table form. (When I tried to, it would insert the data as a miniature open-office calc section that was hard to handle.)

So copied the spreadsheet data to notepad, pasted _that_ into O.O. Writer, and then used this neat trick! Thanks for saving me a few hours of meticulous manual work!