reading in a text file and exporting it to an excel

[Tal]

I need to read in one variable from an external text file and exporting that variable to an excel. Can i do it directly without creating a dataset first?

[Reeza]

Not easily enough to make it worthwhile.

[ballardw]

Depending on the structure of the text file you might be easier to do this directly in Excel using the text import wizard and setting the "do not import" for the columns you don't want. This will be relatively easy if the text is either fixed column or has a consistent delimiter around the variable you want.