Page 1 of 1

Open delimited file with xls extension that is not excel

Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2010 1:56 pm
by TestEngineer
We have a customer who outputs a tab-delimited file and saves the extension .xls to the end so they can open it in excel.

When I'm out on the floor and I want to view these files, I have to use notepad because Excel isn't installed on these PCs (and won't be). When I right-click on the file and select TextPad, I get a hexfile representation because it apparently sees the xls extension and defaults to this behavior. How do I change it to open xls up as a text document?

Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2010 2:33 pm
by ak47wong
You're in luck. You can remove .xls from the list of file extensions that TextPad considers to be binary files:
  1. Click Configure and then click Preferences.
  2. Click the plus sign next to Document Classes.
  3. Click Binary.
  4. Click *.XLS.
  5. Press DELETE.
  6. Click OK.
Andrew

Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2010 2:55 pm
by TestEngineer
Perfect! I knew it had to be a setting somewhere, but I was obviously looking in the wrong place.