Convert XLS to TXT as tab delimited or fixed width text

Many bank payment uploads, payroll interfaces and mainframe imports want a plain text file in a strict layout, not CSV. Some expect tabs between fields, others expect every field padded to an exact width so position 1 to 10 is the account and 11 to 30 is the name.

XlsConverter writes both layouts from old XLS files and lets you set the width, alignment and padding of every column. For modern workbooks see XLSX to TXT, and for tab separated data headed to a spreadsheet see XLSX to TSV.

How to convert XLS to TXT in three steps

1. 1Upload the XLS file.
2. 2Choose tab delimited or fixed width, column widths and encoding.
3. 3Convert and download the TXT file.

Fixed width text files and the byte counting trap

A fixed width file is defined by positions, so every row must have exactly the same length. Values longer than their column are either cut or rejected, and we report each truncated value instead of cutting silently. Numbers are usually right aligned and padded with zeros (000012500 for 125.00 with two implied decimals), text is left aligned and padded with spaces, and both are settings per column.

The trap is the difference between characters and bytes. In UTF-8 a letter like é takes two bytes, so a name padded to 20 characters can be 21 bytes long and shift every field after it for a program that counts bytes. If your target counts bytes, choose a single byte ANSI code page, or let us pad by byte length. This is the most common reason a fixed width upload is rejected.

Tab delimited TXT is simpler but has its own detail: tabs or line breaks inside a cell would break the row structure, so we replace them with spaces. Dates are written in the format the import specification asks for, such as YYYYMMDD. If the receiving system accepts CSV after all, XLS to CSV adds quoting that protects these characters, and CSV to XLS reverses the trip.