S1E7-Text to Columns

Hi, welcome to the 7th episode of Relax with Excel where you may learn something about Excel but will probably fall asleep.  Then again maybe you’ll learn in your sleep.  In this episode we’re going to cover the Text To Columns  feature. 

The “Text to Column” feature is a way to split the text in a cell into multiple columns based on a delimiter or a fixed width. Here is a step by step approach on how to use the “Text to Column” feature : 

• Open a blank Excel file and enter some sample data in a cell. For example, you can enter the following data starting with cell A1.  The other records will be entered in the row after. 

|Alice,90| 

|Bob,80| 

|Charlie,70| 

• Select the column that contains the text you want to split. For example, you can select column A. 

• Go to the Data tab   ck on the Text to Column button in the Data Tools group. You will see the Convert Text to Columns Wizard dialog box. Alternatively you can use the keyboard shortcuts.  Please Alt, then A and then E. 

• In the first step of the wizard, choose the type of data you have: Delimited or Fixed width. Delimited means the text is separated by a character such as a comma, a semicolon, a space, or a tab. Fixed width means the text is separated by a fixed number of spaces. For example, you can choose Delimited as the type of data for the sample data in cell A1. 

• Click Next to go to the second step of the wizard. In this step, you can specify the delimiter that separates the text. You can choose from the predefined options such as Tab, Semicolon, Comma, Space, or Other. You can also enter a custom delimiter in the Other box. In this example, you can choose Comma  for the sample data in cell A1. You will see a preview of the data in the D  iew box. 

• Click Next to go to the third and final step of the wizard. In this step, you can specify the format and destination of the data. You can choose from the options such as General, Text, or Date for the format of each column. You can also click on the Advanced button to set the decimal separator and thousands separator for the numeric data. For example, you can choose Text as the format for the first column and General as the format for the second column for the sample data in cell A1. Yo can allso choose the destination cell wh   the data. By default, the data will overwrite the original cell. You can change the destination by clicking on the Destination box and selecting a different cell or range. In this example, we can leave the default  setting. 

• Click Finish to complete the wizard and split the text into columns. You will see the result in the worksheet. For example, you will see the following data in cells A1:B3: 

| Alice   | 90    | 

| Bob     | 80    | 

| Charlie | 70    | 

That was a basic explanation of the  Text to Columns in Excel.  If you’re still awake, thanks for getting this far. If you’re asleep, pleasant dreams.