LabChart does not directly support the import of ASCII files, but they can be opened in Excel and converted into a LabChart-compatible text file.
1. Open a blank Excel document. Under "File", click "Open". When the dialogue box comes up, select the ASCII file you want to open. The Excel Import Wizard should open.
2. Select "Fixed Width" at the top of the dialogue box. Click "Next".
3. Because some files exported from other data acquisition systems have text headers at the beginning, we will manually set the columns in the data. In the preview window at the bottom of the Step Two dialogue box, scroll down to where the data begins (denoted by a "Time" column followed by "CH1 Input", "CH2 Input", etc.).
4. Manually click and drag the column lines to separate each column. You can double-click a line to eliminate it or click an open area to create a line. After this is done, click "Finish". You should now have the data in the separated columns in Excel.
Note: Although the text may be broken into different boxes, we will ignore non-numerical text when importing into LabChart, so this is not an issue.
5. Go to "File" and select "Save As". Choose an appropriate destination folder and save it as "Text (Tab Delimited)". In the file name, choose a proper file name and add the extension ".txt" to the end of the name. For example:
6. Open LabChart. Go to "File", and click "Open". Make sure the File Type is set to "All Files". Select the .txt file that you just created. The Open Text File dialogue box should open.
7. Select the first two boxes: "Times in first column" and "Ignore non-numeric lines". Ensure the drop-down menu at the bottom is set to "Data Delimiter: Tab". Click "Okay".
Note: LabChart may ask you to adjust the sampling rate on each channel. These will come up sequentially as individual dialogue boxes.