Excel users have long envied 1-2-3's ability to insert the contents of a text file into a worksheet. Until Excel 2000, all versions of Excel required you to open the text file separately, then copy and paste the data to your worksheet.

Excel 2000 makes the process a bit easier, if not quite a snap. You might expect to see this feature on the File menu, but instead you select Data-Get External Data-Import Text File. This command calls up a dialogue box in which you select a text file, whereupon the Text Import Wizard lets you specify how Excel should import the data. Finally, in the Import Data dialogue box, you indicate the desired worksheet destination.

Caption: Excel 2000's Import Data dialogue box enables you
to specify the destination for a text file you want to import

Excel imports the text file as a database query, which you can update if the data in the text file changes (select Data-Refresh Data to do so). To import the file as static data, click Properties in the Import Data dialogue and remove the check mark from the Save query definition box.