Tab delimited export w/ blank cells

I'm running Excel2001 for Mac (though this problem occured under XL98 under Win also). I want to export my spreadsheet as tab delimited text. There are many blank cells, some occur between row entries, others occur at the end of rows. I must have tabs for all blank cells. However, the blank cells at the end of the rows are not always producing tabs, instead it just puts a newline after the last non-empty cell. I've tried selecting the desired cells, but that won't work either. 'Zero values' is on. One wierd thing also: A couple of the first lines do it correctly, but I can find no reason why they are different from the cells that won't produce tabs.
Also note- it's easiest to check for tabs, etc by using Word with the formatting chars (tabs, spaces) visible.
I hope someone has an idea.