Procedure for importing delimited data into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet

NDE can not provide technical support in using the data obtained from the Directory search. This guide is simply a courtesy for visitors who wish to import delimited data into a spreadsheet. NDE does not endorse Microsoft Excel product over others, but the process is explained here due to it is widely used standard software, and other software is similar in functionality. The software is also commonly used by Nebraska Department of Education.  This guide assumes the reader has a basic level of computing experience and is using Microsoft Excel 97 or higher. Because of the numerous versions of software, this guide may not be applicable to your version of software or operating system.

Step 1: After searching the data from the Education Directory Search system, save the comma delimited text file to your local computer.  To do this, click on the button to "Download Text File". The downloaded file will need to be easily locatable.

Step 2: Open Microsoft Excel.

Step 3: Go to "File" and select, "Open". In the open dialog box, be sure that it is pointing to the same folder where you saved the file in Step 1 (see the top selection menu by "Look In"). Be sure that the "Files of Type" on the bottom left says "All Files". You should see file listed in the middle of the dialog box.

Step 4: Text import wizard Page 1 of 3 appears. Choose "delimited", one of the two top left radio buttons. In the middle of this page, there is a box that says "Start Import at Row" and defaults to 1. Click on the up arrow on the right and change it to 2. This is because the first row contains titles. Then click "Next".

Step 5: On the Text Import Wizard, page 2 of 3, the top left box has check boxes under the section "Delimiters." Uncheck the other options, and only hoose the comma “,”. In the Data Preview area, you should see columns of data separated by vertical lines. These lines should line up immediately to the left of the first character in each field. If not, click on the back button and make sure that you chose the comma delimiter and that you started at row 2. Then click "Next"

Step 6: You are now viewing screen 3 of 3 in the text import wizard. The word "General" will appear over each data column and the left-most column will be highlighted. There are radio buttons in the box on the upper right under Data Column Format that allow you to make decisions about each column.

Note: If a column needs leading zeros, suchs as phone numbers, zip codes, agencyID, or other columns, you will need to change the column format. Highlight the column in the Data Review section and click the radio button in front of "Text"; if you do not do so, Excel will format this as a number and therefore drop leading zeroes.

Columns that contain all alphabetic data or mixed numeric and alphabetic can be left as "General" or changed to "Text". If you do not want a column, you can highlight it and click on the option of "Do Not Import".  If you have more than one adjoining column that you want to apply a selection to, you can hold down the shift key and highlight them all. Then click on the appropriate radio button. When you are finished making your selections, click the "Finish" button.

Step 7: Now you should see the file in spreadsheet format. The file may look as though some of the data is missing, but this is only a visual effect. You can rectify it by selecting all the columns, clicking on the menu "Format" and then under the grouping "Cells", choose "Auto Fit". This will expand the column width so that all data can be viewed. You can sort the data any way you wish, delete rows or columns or perform any other activities that are allowed in spreadsheet manipulation. Save the resulting spreadsheet as an Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or other format..