Text tables, such as Monthly Estimate of U.S. Population, can be converted to Excel files by following the steps below:

1. Highlight the table (or part of the table) that you want and copy it.
   
2. Paste the copied material into a text file. In a Windows environment, this means into a Notepad file.
   
   
3. Name the Notepad file somename.txt and close it.
   
   
4. Open Excel and from inside Excel, open up somename.txt.
   
   
5. Excel will automatically start up a "Text Import Wizard" that has 3 steps.
   
   
   1. Tell Excel whether the file is delimited or fixed width. Excel will have one of the choices already clicked and it's usually the right one.
   2. Click "Next" to see if the columns look like they've been separated properly. When they are, click "Next" again.
   3. Decide whether to change the column formats or not import certain columns of information. When you're happy, click "Finish".
   4. Save the file as an Excel file.

Definitions:

-Delimited Files:  when a character like a comma separates the columns in the table.
   Example: County Business Patterns 2001: US

-Fixed Width:  when the columns are aligned by the spaces between them.
   Example: Top 25 American Indian Tribes for the United States: 1990 and 1980 Tip 1.
Copy only the columns and headers first and then copy the notes, table name and other documentation after you've got a working Excel file.

If you do copy the surrounding information at the same time as the columns, then it will get chopped up into multiple cells in Excel.

For example, the content below

Source:   Population Estimates Program, Population Division,

U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, D.C. 20233

would be divided into

Source: Population Estimates	Program, Popula	tion Division,
U.S. Census Bureau, Wash	ington, D.C. 202	33

Tip 2
If the table is really huge, you'll probably get a message saying "This file is too large for Notepad. Would you like to use WordPad?" Say yes and just be sure to give the file the .txt extension.