Excel – Is there a text editor which displays column numbers and/or displays text in a grid to quickly glance column numbers

microsoft excelnotepadtext formattingtext-editors

I basically need a text editor which displays text in a grid, so that I can know the exact column numbers of the text. The numerical simulation software I am using, TOUGH+ (written in FORTRAN), has a strict format and I need to specify my input files in the exact format.

A letter misplaced here and there can make the whole file useless. So I need this to quickly glance at the input files, and know/verify which text starts and ends in which column. Otherwise, the file gets confusing sometimes.

For example in the image of the input file snippet, it's very difficult to separate at a glance where one value ends and other starts.

Input file snippet with lines separating values

The most useful thing I have tried is the TextFX plugin with Notepad++, but it is very inelegant, as in it just places a text of characters to see the column numbers.

Text FX plugin

The best way to describe my requirement would be Spreadsheet but which takes only one character in a cell.

Best Answer

Posting as an answer, as it's too big for even multiple comments. Disclosure: I have not tried any of these, but some have been accepted as answers.

  • Multiple margins in Atom Editor? on S.O says that it is possible, and the answer was accepted.
  • IntelliJ IDE: How to add one or more margins on this site has an accepted answer saying that you can do it with Sublime text (which is not an IDE), plus a comment, with screenshots, showing how to do it with PyCharm, which is JetBrains' excellent and free (even for commercial use), Python IDE.

Personally, I would find it simple enough to write a Python script to:

  • strip multiple spaces from each line
  • split each line into multiple words
  • insert spaces as appropriate
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