seperating text

[edsjr]

I have to seperate some of the items in each cell.......for instance, now it is in as abc123456 I need to get the "abc" into a seperate cell and leave the 123456. I have 30,000 rows to do so I dont really want to do it one at a time.

Thanks
Ed.


[ This Message was edited by: edsjr on 2002-03-28 18:28 ]

[Dave Hawley]

Hi Ed


Have you tried the Text to Columns.. Wizard found under Data?

If this won't work for you then just tell us what the criteria is that should be met, eg first 3 characters, only letters etc.

[Aladin Akyurek]

I have to seperate some of the items in each cell.......for instance, now it is in as abc123456 I need to get the "abc" into a seperate cell and leave the 123456. I have 30,000 rows to do so I dont really want to do it one at a time.

Ed,

If the alpha part of the entries is of fixed length (it's 3 for "abc123456", the option Data|Text to Columns > Fixed Width will do what you want.

If the alpha part is of variable length and assuming that the first target entry is in A1,

In B1 enter:

=SUBSTITUTE(A1,RIGHT(A1,SUMPRODUCT((LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,{".",0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9},""))))),"")

This will give you the alpha part.

In C1 enter:

=SUBSTITUTE(A1,B1,"")+0

This will give you the numeric part.

Activate B1 or C1 or both, give a double click on the little black square in the lower right corner of the cell in order to copy down the formula.

Suppose that you wanted to have the results in B, select all of the cells in B, copy it, and do a Edit|Paste Special >Values to get rid of the formulas.

Aladin