> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.pentaho.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.pentaho.com/pdia-data-integration/9.3-data-integration/pdi-transformation-steps-reference-overview/text-file-output-cp/select-an-engine-text-file-output/using-text-file-output-on-pentaho-engine-cp/options-text-file-output-reuse/content-tab-text-file-output-kettle.md).
# Content tab
The **Content** tab allows you to include the following options for the output text file.
| Option | Description |
| -------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Append** | Select to append lines to the end of the file. |
| **Separator** | Specify the character used to separate the fields in a single line of text, typically a semicolon or tab. Click **Insert Tab** to place a tab in the **Separator** field. The default value is semicolon (;). |
| **Enclosure** | Specify to enclose fields with a pair of specified strings. It allows for separator characters in fields. This setting is optional and can be left blank. The default value is double quotes ("). |
| **Force the enclosure around fields?** | Specify to force all field names to be enclosed with the character specified in the **Enclosure** option. |
| **Disable the enclosure fix?** | Specify to disregard enclosures on string fields and separators. |
| **Header** | Clear to indicate that the first line in the output file is not a header row. |
| **Footer** | Select to specify that the last line in the output file is a footer row.
When using the Append option, it is not possible to strip a footer from the file content before appending new rows.
|
| **Format** | Specify the type of formatting to use. It can be either DOS or UNIX. UNIX files have lines separated by line feeds, while DOS files have lines separated by carriage returns and line feeds. The default value is CR + LF (Windows, DOS). |
| **Compression** | Specify the type of compression (.ZIP or Gzip) to use when compressing the output file. Only one file is placed in a single archive. The default value is None. |
| **Encoding** | Specify the file encoding to use. Leave blank to use the default encoding on your system. To use Unicode, specify `UTF-8` or `UTF-16`. On first use, PDI searches your system for available encodings. |
| **Right pad fields** | Select to add spaces to the end of the fields (or remove characters at the end) until the length specified in the table under the **Fields** tab is reached. |
| **Fast data dump (no formatting)** | Select to improve the performance when dumping large amounts of data to a file by not including any formatting information. |
| **Split every ... rows** | Specify to split the resulting file into multiple parts of N rows if the number N is larger than zero. |
| **Add Ending line of file** | Specify an alternate ending row to the output file. |
---
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