singular to plural

[tehabte]

Hi,

Is there any way to change singular words to plural in excel?

example

dog to dogs

best regards,

 

[PaddyD]

Given the vagaries of English, this could get complicated, but starting simply:

=a1&"s"

 

[tehabte]

Thank you,

I have thought of that but as you know there will be a lot of miss spelling. Is there a way to correct miss spelled words quickly?

 

[PaddyD]

Use a dictionary

It might help if you gave us more details about the problem you're trying to solve...

 

[tehabte]

very funny sorry for not being specific

well i have a lot of data to clean up and change singular words to plural since adding an s at the end of a word can help for some words, for the rest I am thinking of doing a spell check once s is added and get options of similar words on the next five columns.

example

column A

book
box
woman

Column B (after s is added )

books
boxs
womans

Column C (similar words excluding the one that is correct)

boxes
women

column D (similar words that are available)

boxed

column E (similar words....)

boxer

Its a long shot I guess

 

[PaddyD]

Is it the case that you have a list of words, each in a single cell, that you want to change from singular to plural? If so, it might be possible to do a decent first pass using some vba and the dictionary (althought that would be well beyond my vba skills). If not, more details again please...

 

[BenMiller]

I would say take a look at this http://www.meredith.edu/grammar/plural.htm and create a nested IF statement looking at RIGHT(A1,2) or RIGHT(A1,1) and build on that. For example, =IF(RIGHT(A1,2)="ch",A1&"es") ... It should take care of most of your words.
Anything like woman to women cannot be standardized according to a set of rules, so they will have to be done manually, or with a lookup table.

 

[tehabte]

Yes that is exactly what I am trying to do. VBA will do.

I was thinking that if I can cleanup some of the words by adding s at the end and cleanup some more by adding es, for the rest (those that gives me similar word), I can just look at the similar words from the results to pick and chose the plural if it is available.

If any one has a better idea I am all for it.

 

[tehabte]

Thank you very much guys,

Ben, That is an excellent idea, it should take care of most of my problems.

 

[BenMiller]

If you need help writing the nested if, let me know