[Erin Burkett]

THANK YOU BEN! That worked perfectly.

Hi Jorrit - Thanks and yes that was my back-up plan (since the importing by column width in Excel is easy to use) but unfortunately the majority of my text files are well over the ~1 million rows and so that would have come with some added annoyances like breaking up the .txt files and having to open even more files in Excel.

[Erin Burkett]

try

clear
infix 3 first CUSTOMER_ID 1-40 CUSTOMER_ZIP 41-53 str DOB 54-64 str CUSTOMER_GENDER 65-80 TXNA_APPR_TYPE 81-95 TXNA_YEAR 96-105 using example1.txt

I found this explanation (http://einstein.library.emory.edu/St...rt_infix.shtml) to be a great supplement/guide for understanding this syntax (for anyone else's reference who is also a beginner and interested). Thanks again everybody.