SSIS export to Tab Delimited Text file

Question

SSIS export to Tab Delimited Text file

tjallingzijlstra

Old Hand

Points: 350
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May 15, 2013 at 2:00 am

#277537

Hello,
I was asked to make an SSIS package that extracts Supplier data from the source db and export the data to a Tab Delimited Text File.
When I open the Text File the values of the different columns don't neatly organize under the column names.
Is it possible to make a Tab Delimited Flat File export in which the values of the export organize neatly under the column headers of the text file?
Thx in advance!

Viewing 4 posts - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

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Matthew Darwin SSCertifiable Points: 5513 More actions · Answer 1

What you're describing you want to see sounds more like a fixed width file rather than a tab delimited file.

The purpose of delimited files is that you only need to take up the amount of data required to hold the value in your column, this means that unless every column happens to be made up of the same data size, they won't line up neatly. You can then use another facility such as excel to view the data, or import it into a table using the delimiter as the column seperator.

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HanShi SSC-Dedicated Points: 33507 More actions · Answer 2

I guess the outlining is not correct in your view due to a (very) different length of the data in each row. In most text editors tab-stops are pre-defined. When data is longer, it will go to a later tabstop instead of shorter data. See below sample (multiple dots represent one TAB):

pre-definde stab-stops:[font="Courier New"]

.........|.........|.........|.........|

row1_column_1.......row1_column_2

row2_longerdata_column_1......row2_column_2

row3_column_1.......row3_column_2

row4_column_1.......row4_column_2

[/font]

Dispite the allignment in the editor/view the data is correct tab-seperated. Between each column is one tabstop defined. You can verify this by importing the flat file in Excel or some other program.

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tjallingzijlstra Old Hand Points: 350 More actions · Answer 3

Thanks for your replies.

Indeed when I copy the export to Excel it identifies the right values with the right column names. If I want a neat organization of my columns and values I should use fixed column widths instead of tab delimited.