Guest Author - Chris Curtis

© Elusive Creations 2002

The text to column wizard can assist you with separating data entered in a single cell into multiple columns. Learn how this is done.

You have just finished entering a list of names into your Excel Worksheet for a charitable giving campaign you are chairing. You just realized that when you try to sort the list alphabetically, it is sorting by the first name rather than the last. This is not helpful to you. You dread reentering all this data again; but, you don’t have to. You can easily separate them into multiple columns using the text to columns wizard. You may need to manipulate some of the names once you convert them depending on the consistency of the entries. In other words, if some of the names contain middle initials and some do not or if some entries contain titles and some do not, the last names may not all end up in the same column following the conversion. In that case you will need to move entries to line the names up properly.

The convert text to columns wizard allows you to separate the text in the cells by a delimiter. In this example, the delimiter is the space between the first and last names.

Try this so you will see how it works:

? Open a blank worksheet
? Type 4 or 5 full names in column A
? Select the cells containing the names
? Select Convert Text to Columns from the Data Menu
? Chose the file type (delimited) that best describes your data
? Click on the Next button
? Select the Space delimiter; observe that the data is separating appropriately
? Click on the Next button
? Select Text from the Column Data Format
? If you want to replace the data in column a with the separated data, accept the default target cell; otherwise, change the destination cell to B1
? Click on Finish

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