I opened a huge txt data file with FMP and all the data is in a single field. There are about 50 pieces of data, each separated by a semi-colon. There are way too many records to open this in Excel, where I could use "convert to columns" to extract the data into separate fields. I know I could go through the laborious process of creating calculation fields in FMP that would extract the data, but this would take way too much effort. Is there a quick way to get FMP to recognize that data needs to be extracted during the opening process? The only option I see is whether or not the first record has field names. Thanks in advance for any help with this.

You could try opening the text file in a text editor (e.g. TextWrangler), and do a Find/Replace (find semicolon, replace with t). Then you will have a tab-separated file, which Filemaker will import/convert.

This is assuming that it's only FIELDS that are separated by semicolons, while actual records are separated by carriage returns.

Brilliant! It worked! I used Word, and it took an hour to complete. The message said: Word made 2,536,822 replacements!

it took an hour to complete.

:qwery:

I guess time *is* relative. Only 11 minutes have elapsed between my post and yours.

Must be a time warp ... I tried this after my first post before I read your post. Thanks anyway.

Shucks, I thought you meant me when you said "brilliant".

Hey, we're BOTH brilliant! :laugh:

Shucks? Shucks? I adore that word! I haven't heard that for .... ages! :jester:

Golly, I've been dated.