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IMPORT FIXED WIDTH TEXT FILE

(Category: Import | File)

Description

This transformation imports text files with columns of fixed width. The width and name of every column have to be defined explicitly in the transformation properties.

Use the preview pane (click the Show preview button) to visually split text into columns. Click a character in the preview to create a splitter. Drag a column splitter left or right to adjust the column width.

Action Settings

Settings	Description
Load file	Fully-qualified file name of the dataset (includes relative or absolute path).
Encoding	ASCII, ANSI (with code page), and other types of encoding. If you're not sure what to choose, try UTF-8 as it's the most common Unicode encoding.
First loaded line contains headers	Check this "on" if the first line of data contains the field names (headers). If unchecked, columns are given generic "column" names unless user-assigned names are provided in the New columns section. (see below)
New columns	Refer to the table below for new column settings.
Put remaining symbols into column	Check "on" to capture any characters falling outside the final column's defined width. NOTE: If the First loaded line contains headers is checked "on", this column will be named "Remainder" by default. Otherwise, the user can provide the name for this column.

New columns settings
Settings	Description
Add more columns	This button will open a list where the columns in the imported file can be explicitly defined by Name and Width. NOTE: Changes made here can be viewed in the preview pane by clicking the Show preview button at the top.
Name	The names to be assigned to the incoming columns.
Width	The size, in characters, of the column. Characters that extend past the width of the final column are dropped unless the Put remaining symbols into column option is used. (see above).

Advanced options

Settings	Description
Decimal	Select whether decimal points are represented by a point (.) or comma (,).
Skip first lines	Defines the number of rows in the incoming dataset to skip before importing data. Use this in cases where leading rows may contain blank rows or metadata not to be included in the dataset.
Maximum number of lines to load	The maximum number of rows to be imported. Use "0" to read in all ("unlimited") rows.

Importing Multiple Files

This action can import multiple files. See Importing Multiple Files for more information.

Use cases

Use the Import fixed width text file action when you have text-based data in which the fields are defined by spacing (spaces, tabs, leaders, etc.) rather than delimiting characters and you need to import them into columns.

If your data has delimeters, use the Import delimited text file action, instead. If your data is consolidated in a single field, and spacing between values is inconsistent, use the Import plain text action to read it in and use other actions to parse the individual values into columns.

Examples

Example 1: You are importing data from a legacy system's fixed-width output containing names and addresses. The first row contains header information and the column widths are known to be 20, 30, 15, 2, 5.

Name                Address                       City           STZip
John Hardy          111 Any Street                Boston         MA02110
Amanda Smythe       16 East Valley Lane           Hanover        MD21076
Rick Johanssen      14 Sunset Ave, Apt 16B        Delaware City  DE19706

Use the following settings to import this dataset:

Column settings: Set these in the preview pane or enter them under New columns.
(column 1) Name: "Name", Width: 20
(column 2) Name: "Address", Width: 30
(column 3) Name: "City", Width: 15
(column 4) Name: "ST", Width: 2
(column 5) Name: "Zip", Width: 5
First loaded line contains headers = "checked"

For safety, we will add a column to capture overflow characters:

Put remaining symbols into column = "checked"; Column = "Remainder" (default)

Ouput dataset:

Name	Address	City	ST	Zip
John Hardy	111 Any Street	Boston	MA	02110
Amanda Smythe	16 East Valley Lane	Hanover	MD	21076
Rick Johanssen	14 Sunset Ave, Apt 16B	Delaware City	DE	19706

Example 2: You are presented with survey data that has been captured incorrectly - all values have been compressed into a single field. There are 5, single-digit responses, all combined together. The first row is the header row of question numbers (1-5):

To expand these response values into their appropriate columns:

Column settings: Set these in the preview pane or enter them under New columns.
(column 1) Name: "1", Width: 1
(column 2) Name: "2", Width: 1
(column 3) Name: "3", Width: 1
(column 4) Name: "4", Width: 1
(column 5) Name: "5", Width: 1

Output dataset:

1	2	3	4	5
1	4	3	2	4
1	1	2	3	2
4	5	4	5	5
3	4	2	3	4
5	5	2	3	4

(In this case, you could also have used the Import plain text action to read the entire field in and parse into separate columns later in the workflow.)

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