http://venus.census.gov/cdrom/lookup
 
 

Introduction:

One of the more frustrating and time-consuming aspects of downloading data from the web to Excel is that most data on the web is NOT in a format that Excel can easily read (tabs separating columns). Instead, the data is often divided by a varying number of spaces, etc.

However, there is a way around this, at least with the 1990 Census lookup (http://venus.census.gov/cdrom/lookup): using the "tab delimited" output option. But there is a trick: don't save the data in html, and don't copy and paste the data from the web page directly. (This will make the needed tab markers vanish, replacing them with spaces.) Instead, save the output on the web page as a text file, and then open this file from Excel, using the Data Import Wizard to properly read the tabs.

Here it is, step-by-step (for the Windows version; MAC is similar):

1. Open the Census Lookup Page (http://venus.census.gov/cdrom/lookup) and select the data you want. (Select the geographic scale, the cases and the variables using the easy menus.)

2. At the end, you need to choose the format for your data results. (To simply view the data on screen, choose HTML format). To be able to download the data into Excel, select Tab-delimited.

The menu will look like this:

Choose a data retrieval option:

Retrieve the tables you've selected:

HTML format (easy to read) [?]

Tab-delimited format (works better now!) [?]

CODATA format [?]
 
 

Important! When the results appear on the Netscape screen, select "Save As" (under the File Menu). Give the file a name, under "Save as Type," select "Plain Text .txt". (The default is .html, which unfortunately converts the tabs to spaces and thus is not useful for Excel).
 
 

3. Open Excel.

4. Within Excel, Open text file you just created.

5. The "Text Import Wizard" will open. Follow the three steps:

Step 1: Choose "delimited"

Step 2: Select "tab" as delimiter. (Look at the data preview to make sure the data are in the right columns.)

Step 3: Unless you want to change the format of individual data columns, simply hit next.
 
 
 
 

You're done!

(Be sure to also get the variable names from the census web page as well.)

last updated 1/29/01