Have a very large fixed width .txt file, have column widths for the records to guide me, and need .CSV out of it

Question

The text file is a tax roll off the tax assessor website, and it is 2.63 GB. Every program that I have tried, including UltraEdit, Convert XLS, didn't find anything helpful in excel because we're talking like 400 columns and i'm going to want to do this with different volumes as well.

I'm going mad, have spent 12 hours stumbling and gaining too little ground to get accurate columns in an excel file.

Thank you

I am no sed expert, but not loading it into memory but instead changing it on the fly seems the way to solve this. ([sed](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sed) is a Streaming EDitor), — Hennes, Apr 29 '15 at 19:39

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:16

You can use a script:
For example, this is AutoIt:

$getfile = FileOpenDialog("Choose a file",@ScriptDir, "*.tsv",7)
If StringInSTr($getfile,"|") = 0 Then
    $split = StringSplit($getfile,"|")
    For $i = 2 to $split[0]
        $file = FileOpen($split[$i])
        StringReplace($split[$i],@TAB,",")
        FileClose($split[$i])
    Next
Else
    $file = FileOpen($getfile)
    StringReplace($file,@TAB,",")
    FileClose($file)
EndIf

Got this from: Transform Fixed Width to CSV?

Have a very large fixed width .txt file, have column widths for the records to guide me, and need .CSV out of it

1 Answers1