Welcome to the NVO Table Import Wizard. You can convert a text-based table to a VOTable that is suitable for Virtual Observatory applications. You can l ste in your own text, or load an example of a text table by clicking on , then selecting one of the examples.

To start, paste the text table into the yellow box below, then click Next step. You will be led through a simple process which extracts the data columns from your text table to yield a VOTable.

If your table is made from fixed-width columns, continue below
If your table is made from delimited columns, .
Use the mouse to drag the horizontal bar up or down to separate header lines from table rows.
Place, move and remove vertical bars to establish correct column boundaries.
The wizard will understand sexagesimal coordinates if all three parts are present (eg 22 57 53.2 or -00:23:43)
When finished, click on Next step below.

Important: If your table is divided by a separator (eg comma-separated values), .

This page allows you to choose suitable delimiter characters. If your table cells are separated by commas, choose comma as the delimiter. If there are quoted strings in the table, choose the quote character also. When you are finished, click Next step.

Select your column separators:

Optionally, you may specify a quote character which allows embedding of the separator character within a column value:

If that column contains coordinates (RA or Dec), or an identifier, select appropriately. In other cases select the word manual.
The wizard will try to assign a datatype of string or number, but this selection can be changed with the lower cyan triangle.
Modify the Column Title for the column. You can see the header lines below that may help with this.
Modify the table description in the yellow box at the bottom. This is, by default, just the header lines from the table.
Finally, generate the VOTable by clicking Next step

Identify the columns you want in your VOTable:

You may optionally edit the table header:

Below is the generated VOTable. You can now copy and paste this into a text tool and save it to the desktop. A download feature will appear in a future version of the Table Import Wizard.