Why not use your favorite text editor? I would suggest using font courier new so that all characters occupy the same amount of physical space because it makes lining up fields easier. WordPad has a ruler that will help line things up. then just save your data to a text file.

Or did I miss something in your question?

Excel or OpenOffice will both create text files with columnar formatting. I also use the NoteTab Light (free) and the Pro (cost) versions. Also, Notepad++ (open source) is useful for many systems and purposes.

NoteTab and Notepad++ provide numerous libraries of add-ons and styles as well as allowing you to create some of your own.

OpenOffice goes much farther, including forms of database manipulation — perhaps beyond what you want. But you might only need the basic spreadsheet function for simple column-oriented text.

It’s hard to tell just what you’re looking for. A description of a couple tasks that you need to get done might help.

Tom