I often export data from Matlab into TSV files for students and collaborators to use in other programs. It is not entirely straightforward to open these files in MS Excel, so here is a series of screenshots of how to do it. There are two tricks to make it work:

  • [Remember to use “tab” as the delimiter between columns]{style=“line-height: 13px;”}
  • On Norwegian and other systems that use “comma” as decimal separator, it is necessary to specify that the TSV file contains values with “dot” as the decimal separator.

Empty Excel spreadsheet before importing TSV file

Excel File menu showing import options{.alignnone .size-medium .wp-image-2286 width=“300” height=“280”}

Import dialog showing file type selection with TSV option highlighted

Text import wizard dialog for configuring TSV file format

Import wizard showing field delimiter and decimal separator settings

Import wizard dialog with additional TSV configuration options

Final import wizard step confirming TSV field preview

Excel spreadsheet with imported TSV data displayed in columns

TSV-import09{width=“300” height=“258”}

TSV-import10{width=“300” height=“257”}

TSV-import11