Immediately under the heading Exempt Organizations Master Listing,  download either the Word or ASCII version of the instruction booklet.  It explains the data contained in the BMF files, and (on pages 3 and 4 of the Word version) lists the fields and the number of characters in each.  You’ll need this to import the data easily into Excel.  In fact, it will be much easier to do the import routine if you copy and paste the field description into a separate document, make it a single page in a larger font, and print it out.  Use this link to reach this document directly.

Download the files you are interested in.  Keep in mind that a single Excel worksheet can contain a maximum of 65,536 rows.  The size of a workbook is limited only by the available memory and system resources of your computer.  There are several states whose data will therefore not fit on a single worksheet. However, if you have a database program such as Oracle, DB2, FoxPro or some other full featured DB program, using that rather than Excel will avoid these limitations as well as give you more options for manipulating the data.

Open the file you want to download.  Theses are self-executing compressed files, so they have a .exe file extension.  You must uncompress them to use them, but you don’t need to have any other programs on your computer to do so.

The uncompressed file will have a file extension of .lst.   If the file is very large (New York, for example), you may find it necessary to use a file splitting utility, or if you have enough PC memory, you can use a word processing program to split the file into manageable pieces. The other option would be to delete the first 65,536 rows of the text file after the first import, and then run the import routine again.

Open Excel and select Data, Import External Data, Import Data from the menu.  (These instructions were prepared using Excel 2002.  Earlier or later versions of the software may differ in the arrangement of menu items.)  Select all files in the dropdown box and then navigate to and select the file you downloaded.

In Step 1 of the Import Wizard, select the fixed width option and click Next.

In Step 2 of the Import Wizard, use the field descriptions you printed out earlier to set the correct field widths.  The field widths as automatically generated by Excel will not be correct in most cases.  Click Finish when you are done.

In Step 3, you can safely leave all field types as General.  In particular, do not change any of the date fields to the Date type, because Excel does not recognize the BMF date format.  Click Finish and then OK to put  the incoming data in the current worksheet.  If you are working with a file that exceeds the line limit mentioned above, you’ll receive a warning at this point.  Click OK to allow the import process to continue.

In a few moments (time depends on your computer memory), your data will appear.  You’ll find it easier to work with if you then insert a row at the top for column headings.  If your worksheet is already the maximum size, you must first delete the last row of data before attempting to insert a blank row or you will receive an error message.

If you are working with one of the larger files, you’ll need to repeat this process on the split files to capture the remainder of the data on additional worksheets.   Select the tab for Sheet 2 and then select Data, Import External Data, Import Data from the menu again.  Follow the same steps as before to navigate to and select the correct file.