Auto-Detect Column Boundaries from Text

Automatic Column Detection

When you receive a fixed-width file without documentation, manually figuring out where each column starts and ends can be tedious. The Auto-detect feature analyzes your data and infers column boundaries automatically.

How the Algorithm Works

1. Scan all lines and record the length of the longest line
2. Count spaces at each character position across all lines
3. Identify gaps — positions where 70% or more of lines have a space character
4. Find transitions between gap regions and data regions
5. Build columns using transition points as boundaries

Example

Input text:

Alice       Engineering    Senior     85000
Bob         Marketing      Junior     62000
Charlie     Engineering    Lead       95000
Diana       Sales          Manager    78000

The algorithm detects spaces at positions 12-13, 27-28, and 38-39 across all lines. It generates:

Column	Start	Width
Column1	0	12
Column2	12	15
Column3	27	11
Column4	38	5

When Auto-Detect Works Best

• Text where columns are clearly separated by runs of spaces
• Data with consistent column widths across all rows
• Files where no field values contain multiple consecutive spaces

When Auto-Detect Struggles

• Data with no spacing between adjacent columns (e.g., zero-padded numerics touching text)
• Columns containing empty values that create false space runs
• Data with irregular formatting or mixed-width lines

After auto-detection, you can rename columns from the default Column1, Column2, etc. and adjust widths if the detection is slightly off.