Is This Possible?

[Infinity]

I had a problem yesterday and you all helped me solve it! Thanks much.

Now another one. I don't know if this is possible or a really dumb question so bear with me.

I have this HUGE spreadsheet. It has a column with information, such as:
Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont, Poland, novelist
Jan R Slotemaker de Bruane, Dutch clergyman/politician
Joseph Cuvelier, Belgian historian/archivist
Amedos Peter Giann San Jose, CA, founded Bank of America
John McClutcheon, cartoonist
August Reusner, composer
Chi Morgenstern, writer

The next column will state which Category each cell falls into:
For example:
History & Politics
Literature & Theater
Music, etc.

Is it possible to write something that states "If cell has 'composer' in it, then type "Music" in following cell? And so forth? I know this will not work 100% because of the wording of some cells however I have probably 50,000 entries and would LOVE not to have to type each one by hand.

Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance,
Infinity

 

[Greg Truby]

You could use the Excel function Search() like, =If(IsError(Search(Upper(A1),"COMPOSER")),"","Music"). But that's gonna be a pain to do for multiple criteria/categories.

I'd probably go with using Data | Filter | Autofilter and setting the criteria to Custom and using the "Contains" option. Then once autofilter has filtered for you, highlight the cells you want to fill, type in your value in the ActiveCell and hit Ctrl+Enter to fill all the cells simultaneously.

HTH

 

[Carvel]

I might be tempted to do Data / Text to Columns / Delimited and select comma as the delimiter. Then select your data and sort based on the occupation. This will at least group the entries by occupation, and will help you out with variances in spelling etc.

- Kevin