Instructions for importing geyser data files into Microsoft EXCEL.

The files containing geyser erupton times and intervals (and durations
in some  cases) are either comma delimited; that is, they have commas
between items in  the file that should go into separate cells in EXCEL,
or tab delimited (with tab  codes between fields).

To import one of these files, download the file to a convenient
directory on your hard drive.  Next, start EXCEL with a blank workbook. 

Select File, then Open from the menu bar.  Use the directory tree to
locate the directory containing the file that you want to convert to a
spreadsheet.

The file name will not appear in the window until you select text files
in the box labelled "Files of type:".  Select text files by clicking on
the arrow at the right of the box and selecting "Text Files (*.prn,
*.txt, *.csv). 

The file that you downloaded should now appear in the file list.

Highlight the file that you want to load, then click the OPEN button.

The "Text Import Wizard - Step 1 of 3" should appear.  Make sure the
Delimited radio button is selected (about 1/3 of the way down the box),
then click "Next>"

In Text Import Wizard - Step 2 of 3, make sure that "comma" is checked
in the delimiters box for comma delimited files, or that "tab" is
checked for tab delimited files.  No other box should be checked.  The
Data preview should show the time/date field separated from the interval
field by a vertical bar.

Click Finish to import the file.  The first column contains the time and
date, and will probably display as "#######" because the field is too
short for a time/date group.

Format the time/date column by:

1. click on the gray "A" box to select the whole column.  Select
Format:Cells from the menu.  The Format Cells dialog box should appear.

2. Select the Number tab, then select "custom" at the bottom of the
list.

3. In the white box under the label "Type:" highlight the default format
(General), then type the format you desire.  I use dd/mmm/yy HH:mm:ss,
which displays dates as "01/Jan/03 17:30:24", but you can experiment
with other formats.  After typing the format string, click OK.  The
first column should now be readable.  The second column should already
be recognizable as times in the familiar hh:mm:ss format, but you might
want to reformat using 24-hour time for geysers with long intervals. 
The format that displays times longer than 24 hours as hours and not
days is "[hh]:mm:ss".

Save the file as an EXCEL worksheet by selecting "File:Save As" from the
menu and changing the "Save As Type" box from "Text (Tab delimited
text)" to "Microsoft Excel Workbook (*.xls).  Click Save, and you have
an EXCEL worksheet ready for whatever graphing or analysis you choose to
do.

The main thing is that placing the date and time in the same cell makes
them one number that EXCEL can compute with, so you can easily find
intervals and so on.