Origin behaves badly when I attempt to read in the attached
wide file - which is the actual data I want to manipulate.
The file is attached in whatever format Microsoft Outlook
attaches files in.

Input File Description

The file is notable, perhaps, in that it is quite wide:

120 lines
61 columns
558 characters/line, on average

It contains tab-separated-values (a Microsoft TSV).

It contains certain fields that contain text data,
in particular containing commas, such as
spec95,099.go,I=ref,S=5stone21

It contains the string "undef" to indicate missing data.

It contains fieldnames as the first line of the file.
It may be worth noting that these fieldnames contain
underscores and periods, e.g.
ctr16.benchmark_unique_name

Problem Description

Two problems:

(1) the file will not load correctly.
(2) invariably, when I try to load it a second time,
Origin crashes

Let me describe these problems in more detail

(1) the file will not load correctly

When I do "File/Import/ASCII" and click my filename,
without setting any special data templates, invariably

a) Origin correctly detects that it is tab separated - GOOD

b) Origin decides that line 26 contains the fieldnames
(column labels, whatever) - BAD
Q: why not the first line?

c) Origin only loads in data lines 33-61 - BAD
(although so far as I can tell, the data is loaded in correctly for
these lines).

d) Origin only loads in 24 characters for each text field

e) various goofinesses relating to "undef" text fields in data fields

This is PRETTY DAMN BAD.

I can imagine that Orign may have various filesize and/or line length limits.
But it should at least provide error messages when these limits are exceeded.

I note that I have also tried explicitly setting flags, such as indicating the
delimiter,
and converting the "undef" strings to numeric values (-9999). No help.

(2) Origin crashes

If I attempt to perform the same action again, "File/Import/ASCII" ...
Origin just plain crashes, with an error window and an instruction number from
the debugger.

No matter what the user priblem, it is just plain bad to crash.

Attached Files

Origin crashed when importing your file because the first line contained
illegal characters for worksheet column names. Select File:Import ther
Options(other ASCII Import Options) from the Origin main menu and uncheck
everything except Append Column Name to Label. This will allow the file to be
imported without
a crash.

If you change the first two columns of your worksheet to be of Column Type
Text(double click on the column name and select Text from the Column Type list
box)then your other problems should be solved as well.