Here's my question, I have a word file that is laid out very nice using tab stops. I want to import it into Excel but when I do it loses alingment. Is there a way to draw a table over the text in word and thus keeping the columns aligned? I've tried convert text to table using tab stops but that messes it up as well. If I could just draw the table on top of the text where I want it, it would work. Is this possible or any other suggestion would be great! Thanks. Bill

Unless it's data that needs Excel features (like formulas, database exports, etc.) I would just draw the table over the top of the Word document. Here's how: Look at the drop-down menu "Table," click "Draw Table" (the pencil icon), then draw away. -Bob

Okay I've tried that first but it won't draw the table over the text it pushes the table to the side of the document. I need to know how to draw the boxes or cells over the text and keep the text within the cells.

hmmm.... I didn't have any trouble keeping lined-up text inside the table. Are you using the pencil-icon to manually draw the table? I was successful both with data seperated by spaces and data seperated by Tabs. The trick is to use the "pencil" to "draw" a box around all of the text to begin with. Then draw dividers inside the main box. Here is my e-mail: ebehrend(at)raton.com If you are having trouble still, send me a sample of your text and I'll test it myself.

Bob, That seems to be a start but when I draw the table around the text it still kind of screws it up. I will send you a sample of what I'm working on. Thanks for your help! Bill

Well my ultimate goal was to get the word file into Excel in the same format as it was in Word. What I came up with was this I printed the doc to a PDF using Acrobat 5.0 (thank god I have the full version!) Then I highlighted the text with Adobes table tool and then just copied and pasted it into Excel! IT WORKS!! Thank you for all your help with this! Bill If your interested here is the link to how to copy in PDF. http://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=670

Highlight the information for the table. From the Table dropdown menu, select Convert Text to Table. You will get a pop-up box for the table options (rows, columns, tab separtion, etc).