July 14, 2005

Downloading From AmericanFactFinder With MS Windows XP OS

When you try to do a download from the American FactFinder, you may encounter a few differences from your downloads made under a previous version of Windows. Our staff is looking to improve the download process in XP, but in the meantime we recommend that you choose the compressed Excel option and save the file that way. XP automatically unzips the file and allows you to open a pop-up box with four files listed. Pick the Excel (.xls) file with the word "data" in the name and double click. This lets you open the file neatly in Excel. For long geographic names (column C), expand the size of the column so the full name is displayed.

For small downloads, the Rich Text Format (RTF), transpose columns and rows option works well. When you select this option, open your downloaded tabulation, select and copy the entire file (hit CTRL and the" A" key simultaneously and then copy) and paste it into your spreadsheet or data base application. This option again distributes the data into separate cells so you do not have to resort to the "text to columns" command. You can still choose the delimited options with no problem, but for small files the RTF option is the simplest way to get the data into your application. It becomes a problem if you have many columns of data, so stick to the transpose option.

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