Re: Word's default formatting for .TXT files

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

From: garfield-n-odie (anonymous_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 07/02/04 

Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 21:42:27 -0700

I'm no computer science major or philosopher, so I can't tell you who
decided or why. From Webopedia:

text file: A file that holds text. The term text file is often used as
a synonym for ASCII file, a file in which characters are represented by
their ASCII codes.

ascii file: A text file in which each byte represents one character
according to the ASCII code. Contrast with a binary file, in which there
is no one-to-one mapping between bytes and characters. Files that have
been formatted with a word processor must be stored and transmitted as
binary files to preserve the formatting. ASCII files are sometimes
called plain text files.

Jeff Relf wrote:

> Hi garfield-n-odie,
>
> First, Thanks for taking the time to reply.
>
> You wrote,
> " .txt files have NO formatting built-in,
> so what you see is how the file is meant to look. "
>
> Who decides those settings... Microsoft or me ?
>
> There Must be some way to set what margins and fonts
> Word uses when it first opens some .TXT file... Right ?
>
> If not, please tell me, so I can just forget about it.
>
> You added,
> " You can add formatting/fonts/margins/whatever and
> save it as a Word .doc file to retain your changes. "
>
> Of course, but that gets real tedious, real quick.
>

Relevant Pages

  • Re: EBCDIC to ASCII file conversion
    ... I've used cygwin and UnixUtils' dd to verify that we can routinely convert further EBCDIC files, and both apps generate the same output for the EBCDIC file supplied. ... All lines in the ASCII file they supplied contain 451 characters, most of which contain zeroes for the 2nd half of the line. ... In the output from dd, there are numerous instances of a left brace, followed by nine 0's, followed by another left brace. ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc)
  • Merge errors
    ... We are getting errors when we try to do a mail merge in Word 2003 SP1 ... with an ASCII file generated in a custom database. ... name to 39 or less by removing the spaces, ... The "#%$" are actually displayed as chinese characters?. ...
    (microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields)
  • Re: How to distinguish between binary and ASCII file on file opening?
    ... "CFF" wrote in message ... > binary and ASCII file to be loaded from hard disk so that different ... The more characters you check, ...
    (microsoft.public.vc.mfc)
  • Re: Recognising file type (ascii/binary)
    ... > characters you can deem the file binary or corrupt. ... > heuristics for guessing the "type" of the file based ... > (And files with 2-byte UNICODE characters can really confuse things.) ... probably isn't a valid ASCII file on any of the above three platforms. ...
    (comp.lang.java.programmer)
  • Re: How do I save a file as an ASCII file?
    ... Only *some* of your formatting is lost? ... An ASCII file is a plain text file without all the WORD ... What is an ASCII file and how can I save a word document ...
    (microsoft.public.word.newusers)