Delimited sized columns in notepad++

Question

I'm currently building string messages to send to an IBM server.

Basically we have the definition of the fields, but when I build the message using notepad or Notepad++ sometimes I make mistakes because these are very long fields.

Example:

Message definition:
User:String 40 chars
Workstation:String 20 chars
Path:100 chars

Is there a way in Notepad++ to define column sizes to fill later?

Something like this:

[ ][ ][ ]

[User1 ][Workstation][Path ]

Output:

User1 WorkstationPath

Answer 1

This is just a work around: you can prepare one line with the template you have in mind, copy/paste it several times, fill it with the text you want and then (saving a backup) replace the strings that limit the spaces with blanks.

Another way would be to use Excel (maybe limiting the content's length for every column) and export it to a formatted text file (see this SuperUser page).