Comments on: How to split cells in Excel: Text to Columns, Flash Fill and formulas

In this article you will find several options to split cells and entire columns in Excel 2016, 2013, and lower. See how to use Text to Columns to split cell contents by delimiter, Flash Fill to separate cells automatically, and formulas to extract names, text and numbrs in different cells. Examples and screenshots will help you choose the right approach for splitting your data in Excel. Continue reading →

Comments page 6. Total comments: 189

  1. I am utilizing google doc, which the responses are downloaded into an excel format of google sheets. In one of the cells, there are about three product names listed. I am needing to detect if there are mutiple words within the cell, and automatically separate them, while copying all of the other information in 5 other cells. The separation needs to be vertical, not horizontal on the spreadsheet. Please advise and thank you in advance.

    1. Hello, Ann,

      Looks like there is no simple solution for your task, most likely you need a special VBA macro.

  2. How to separate text and number.
    exp.
    rakesh400
    mukesh401
    abhi402

    pls

    1. If you always have three numbers to the right, then use these formulas:
      Text: =left(A2,len(A2)-3)
      Numbers: =right(A2, 3)

      Where A is the column with the source data.

      Enter the formulas into two columns and copy them down to the end of the source data.

      If the number of digits after text can be different, then you need a VBA macro to fulfill this task, the formula will be too long.

  3. Hi,
    I would like to know how to split cells horizontally. Is it possible, I know I can do it in a Word document but can't work out if it is possible in Excel.
    I have a spreadsheet with each line for columns A to N with a height of 84.0 (112 pixels). From columns O to W I would like to half the height to 42.0 (56 pixels).

    Is that something that can be done?
    BTW thanks for the above article, I have learnt something I will be able to use.

  4. hi,
    would like to ask if i created a file as text file, i open with excel.
    all the contents in the sheet is in the same column, may i know how can i make it in separate column as what i read in adobe or our system ?
    Ie :
    ACCOUNT : 111 AREA : bbb1

    NO STOCK CODE DESCRIPTIONS QUANTITY U.PRICE DISC AMOUNT

    00000000 CHIC.FLOSS 1KG-ORI(HALAL) 5 37.90 189.50

    its look like in different column, but its not. all the content was in the same column and the content is not in order,difficulty for us to edit the content which it suppose to be in separate column.

  5. Hi Svetlana,

    I have a problem. in one cell i have entered a text, i need to insert a text from another sheet in between.

    data in cell "( City/Centre:__________________)"

    now i want to insert from another sheet a text data or a numeric data which should be as shown below.

    Data in cell after inserting "(Centre / City :_________Bangalore____)"

    The word bangalore should also be underlined.

    Can this be done. if so how to do it. it will be very helpfull in my work.

    Thanks

    Chandra shekar

  6. how to insert cell within a cell

    1. To my best knowledge, this is not possible.

  7. How to remove 91 from phone list . see below details for your references

    Phone#
    91 281 3018308
    91 0281 3018227
    91 0281 3018325
    91 812 87482

  8. Sir,
    Thank you very much for this Fantastic tutorial,.
    Looking forward for your help to resolve the following.
    I have a table as attached below
    3043 ISACN-194 ISA MATHEW PV
    PARASSERIL, KUNNUMKAI, WEST ELERI
    BEEMANADI
    3044 ISACN-195 ISA SREEDHARAN K
    POYYALAM HOUSE, ENNAPARA, KANHANGAD
    ATHIRA TEXTILES, ENNAPARA
    3045 ISACN-196 ISA BABY JOSEPH
    THEKKINIKUNNEL, POODAMKALLU, KASARAGOD
    CHEERS COOL BAR, POODAMKALLU
    3046 ISACN-197 ISA ABBAS
    ORAVANKARA, ERAVANNUR, CALICUT
    HAPPTY BOOK CENTER, BEKAL, KANHANGAD

    in each serial no, the address field is in three rows in single colmn. I have to get this adress column to be split in three seperate columns. means 1,4,7,10 etc in a col and 2,5,8,11 etc in another coloumn and 3,6,9 12 etc in another one.
    pls give a formulae for this.
    thank u

  9. Your article is fantastic - however - I seem to have a bit of a different issue - not sure if it can be done or not
    I have a txt file, opened in excel, and I was able to create 2 columns from 1 so that I have a start to what I want to accomplish:
    COL A COL B
    BEGIN VEVENT
    DTSTART 2010103108000
    DTEND 2010103109000
    DESCRIPTION FIRSTNAME LASTNAME
    END VEVENT
    and the pattern repeats

    Is there anyway I can create separate columns labeled BEGIN DTSTART DTEND DESCRIPTION (from column A)
    and have the info from Column B then fill in the appropriate column?

  10. Hi,

    Having looked through how you have solved so many others problems I hope you can help me!

    I have been importing a table from a website and written quite a bit of excel logic after that import. Problem is the website has now changed and is now no longer an importable table!

    This means the data input from the website now comes into 1 cell of data in one string.

    The data is delimited by an increasing number i.e. 1ChrisCatling2VickyCatling3JamesCatling...
    Can I use the Text to Columns wizard by specifying a number (which is obviously changing) so for example to display
    1 Chris Catling
    2 Vicky Catling
    3 James Catling
    ...

    1. Hello Chris,

      Try to open the website using another browser, it may help. If it doesn't, then you need a small VBA macro, formulas and the Text to Columns feature cannot help you with your task.

  11. i have huge data were different format with the combination of alfanumrci samle as below just want sapration these data

    NEFT CRDEUT0784BBYIDEA CELLULAR LTD
    NEFT CRCITI0000006GOOGLE INDIA PRIVATE
    NEFT CRCITI0000004IBM INDIA PVT LTDCA

    Can you help me on this

  12. Hi,

    What a fantastic article, very informative and well written.

    I do have a problem with the text to columns feature; when splitting a column containing numbers with leading zero's, they zero's are removed in the final output columns.

    For example 'ABC.005.001' is split to 'ABC', '5', '1'. I am missing the leading zeros, ideally the output should be 'ABC', '005', '001'.

    I have tried setting the columns to text format but still no luck!

    Regards

    Shane

    1. Hi Shane,

      Thank you for your kind words, Shane.

      It looks strange, I tried to reproduce the issue using your example, everything worked correctly in Excel 2013. Please try to set the format of the columns where you will insert data as Text beforehand, and also set the Text format for all columns in the "Text to columns" wizard.

      If this doesn't work for you, please send a sample workbook with your data to support@ablebits.com and we will try to help.

  13. Hello,

    Thank you for this article, in which a deep understanding and diligent attitude can be shown.

    I got, however, a problem, that remains unsolved (or I overlooked the solution), though it seems to be quite simple, or at least can be well defined. It goes like this:

    There is a column (let's say column A), containing some technical descriptions, no more then 100 characters long, but some of these descriptions can even be as short as only one word. Just a common characters collection, like alpha, numbers, slashes, dashes, spaces etc. Nothing special there. What I need to do is to split it into 3 columns (say columns B,C,D) of no more then 35 characters each; (content of these columns will then serve another application as subsequent lines of descriptions). Up to now it's pretty simple, but I don't like to have it split in a way that words are cut in half, but rather split it at where spaces can be found. So we can define rules (just for the 1st splitting, for subsequent could be easily transposed):
    1. splitting should occur at space directly before 36th character in column A,
    2. if there is no space between, let's say, 20th and 36th character in column A, splitting should occur after 35th character,
    3. if there's less then 35 characters in column A, then column B = column A, column C is just empty (I mean no things like #ARG!, #VALUE! etc.)

    I would be grateful if you could direct me towards the proper attitude to such a task.

    Thank you again,
    Mario

    1. Hello Mario,

      I think this task is too complex to be handled by formulas. Anyway, very long and complicated formulas will be required, so I'd opt for a macro instead.

  14. Hi,

    I am trying to split cells in excel. The tricky part is that I need to split differently per line. See example below.

    Line 1 should be split this way:
    XXECR06541200960635204109DDDD

    x xe cr 0654 120096 0635 204109 DDDD

    Line 2 should be split this way:
    PP6SCR06511222960022204109EEEE

    p p6s cr 0651 122296 0022 204109 EEEE

    I would truly appreciate any help here.

    thanks.

    1. Hello Martin,

      If you need to split the odd lines in one way, and the even lines in the other, you can do the following:

      1. Insert two helper columns into your table. Let's name the 1st column – ID, the 2nd – ODD.

      Type in 1 in the first cell and 2 in the second cell of the ID column. Select both cells and drag the fill handle (a small black square in the bottom right corner of the selected cell) down to auto fill the rest of the column with consecutive numbers 1,2,3,4 etc. For more details about using Excel's AutoFill feature, please see this article:
      https://www.ablebits.com/office-addins-blog/autofill-excel/

      2. In the first cell of the ODD column enter the formula =mod(F2,2), where F2 is the first cell in the ID column.

      3. Copy the formula to the other cells in your table, see here for a quick way:

      4. Sort your table first by the ODD column, then by the ID column.

      5. Split the upper part of your table in one way, the lower part in the other one.

      6. Sort the original table + the results of splitting by the ID column. As a result, you'll get the table where the rows are the same as in the original table.

      7. Delete the helper columns.

      Hope this is the result you are looking for.

  15. I have a question on my data set. I have a bunch of addresses in a data file, but these addresses come from another data source and have been split by an enter (alt-enter in excel). I am looking for a way to split the data based on this enter and have been unsuccessful thusfar. I hope there is any formula to do this, but I fear I'll have to manually insert a ; everywhere to split it.

    What do I mean:
    In Excel if I enlarge my function box (the one in the top where you insert your data) I can see the address perfectly split by enters having a new line for each part of the adress..
    Example:
    11 Mosside Drive
    Tradespark
    Nairn
    IV12 5PN

    unfortunately in the excel field below this is shown as one large string of text..
    Example:
    "11 Mosside DriveTradesparkNairnIV12 5PN"
    Only showing spaces where there are any in a single line.

    Is there any way I could split this based on the enters given? or is my only option to split this one manually??

    Thanks for the help!
    Jeroen

    1. Hello Jeroen,

      No need to split it manually. You can try out his way:

      - Go to Text to columns > Delimited
      - Check the "Other" checkbox, place the mouse pointer in the box next to it and Ctrl+J (it is a keyboard shortcut for a line break).

      You should see the text properly split to columns in the Preview window.

      1. thank you so much this worked for me and i didn't have to write 100 number :-)

  16. suraj,kumar,bharti LEFT(A2, FIND(",",A2)-1) , =MID(A2, FIND(",",A2) + 2, FIND(",",A2,FIND(",",A2)+2) - FIND(",",A2) - 2) , =RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2) - FIND(",", A2, FIND(",", A2) + 1))

  17. one row with column data contains sequence 'COI-CLP-COI-FDT988/1200-CLC11200-COU-FD425'
    another row with column data contains 'CLC1200-COU'
    I want this sequence to be split and post under appropriate column
    example :

    Row Sequence COI FDSC CLSC DX F425
    ROW1 COI-FDSC-CLSC-DX-F425-COI-DX 2 1 1 2 1
    ROW2 CLSC-DX-COI 1 1 1

  18. Hello,

    I seem to get an error message when using the formulas =MID(A2, SEARCH(",",A2) + 2, SEARCH(",",A2,SEARCH(",",A2)+2) - SEARCH(",",A2) - 2) and also =RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2) - SEARCH(",", A2, SEARCH(",", A2) + 1)).

    It states there are too many arguments

    1. Just to note, I am trying to seperate three words with comma's and no spaces in cell A2. example - Joe,Bloggs,1998

      1. Hi Phil,

        Your second formula is correct. But for some reason it contains long dashes instead of the minus sign, and curly quotes instead of smart quotes. This sometimes happens when copying formulas from the web. Just fix this and the formula =RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2) - SEARCH(",", A2, SEARCH(",", A2) + 1)) will work fine.

        As for the first formula, you have to replace +2 with +1 and -2 with -1, because your data does not contain spaces like in my example. So here's the correct formula for your data:
        =MID(A2, SEARCH(",",A2) + 1, SEARCH(",",A2,SEARCH(",",A2)+1) - SEARCH(",",A2) - 1)

        1. OMG THANK YOU for the " comments.

  19. sir
    i am unable to do the split cells in open office excel sheet how to do it can you give the examples sir.

    1. Hi Chakravarti,

      Sorry I am not able to help with the Open Office, I do not have any experience with it.

  20. This is an excellent article. The best thing are the screenshots that explain all the steps. Thank you very much.

    1. Thank you for your kind words! I appreciate your feedback.

  21. hai shawna

    My name is venkatesh i am working at some office i have problem in excel sheet that is in that excel sheet contain only one cell somany charaters involved in that cell. in the sense a cell contain a,b,c,d, but i need to convert a singlecolumn data in the sense A
    B
    c
    D if you know please help me and give screen shots

    1. Hello Venkatesh,

      I do not exactly understand what you are trying to achieve. If you want to replace commas with line breaks, then select all the cells you want to change, press Ctrl+H, enter comma (or semicolon) in the 'Find What' field, put the cursor in the 'Replace With' field and press Ctrl+J.

      If you need to change the lowercase to uppercase, please check out this article .

      1. I'm guessing, what he's trying to achieve is to separate characters from 1 cell into several columns.

        Eg.
        abcde (1 cell) -> a | b | c | d | e (5 cells/columns)

        My suggestion:
        LEFT(), RIGHT() functions (with relation to LEN() & SEARCH() function).. Google them.

  22. Hi Your article is great. I'm trying to use this information to split up address but the lenght of the street numbers are names are not uniform. Here is data below. Any idea of what formula i can use to put street number, street name in separate columns?

    Address Street Number Street Name Street Type
    340 Pinemont Rd. Ne
    11414 83 Ave.
    10210 91 St.
    2 Hillman Close
    37 Carswell Rd. S E
    207 10 Ave. SE
    220 3Rd. Ave. W
    4607 45 Ave.
    4425 5 St. E

    1. Use the spaces as delimiters?

    2. Thank you Shawna!

      Regrettably, I cannot suggest any formula for your case. You can check out the Address Assistant add-in that is especially designed for splitting all kinds of addresses.

  23. Thank you for this article. It helped me a lot in my work. Really appreciate this.

    1. Thank you for your comment Karthik! I am really glad to know it was helpful.

  24. We have two excel sheets having salary values with badge id's,both the badge id's contains alpha numeric but numeric. We have to pull the values from sheet #2 to Sheet #1 by using formula,please advise

    Example :
    Sheet#1 : ASDF123 (Badge ID)
    Sheet#2 : FDSA123 (Badge ID)

    1. Hello Ashok,

      You can do it in this way:

      - On Sheet#2, create a helper column "Badge ID Helper" and copy this formula across the "Badge ID Helper" column:
      =MID(A2,4,1)&MID(A2,3,1)&MID(A2,2,1)&MID(A2,1,1)&MID(A2,5,4)

      - Merge Sheet #2 and Sheet #1, by matching "Badge ID Helper" and "Badge ID" on sheet#1. You can use our tool, Merge Tables Wizard for easy merging. If you prefer to use Excel formulas, please check out this article - Look up with Lookups in Excel.

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