Excel to custom character delimited value text(similiar to csv)

Recently after spending a lot of painful hours on trying to convert a excel file to a pipe or tilda or hash delimited value text file, i figured out a very easy solution to implement this on a windows xp machine

Setting up custom character as the default delimiter

From the Start button on the MS Windows task bar, highlight
Settings and select the Control Panel. In the Control Panel window select
Regional and Language Options.
2. In the Regional and Language Options window, select the Regional Options
tab, click the Customize… button.
3. In the Customize Regional Options window, select the Numbers tab.
4. Set the List Separator field to a pipe-delimited symbol | by pressing Shift and |. (You can set any other character you wish)

5. Click OK to close the Customize Regional Options window.
6. Click OK to close the Regional and Language Options window.


Convert MS Excel to the Custom character separated value text file

7. Open MS Excel.
8. In the menu bar click File and then click Open.
9. Choose the excel format file that you want to convert.
10. After excel opens and the data is loaded, In the menu bar click File and the click Save.
11. In the Save As window select CSV (Comma delimited) from the Save as type:
dropdown list and click Save

Don't forget to revert back the default delimiter setting else you will see a lot of unwanted of behavior in alot of applications, MS word, Excel, etc