This has been a fairly busy week. Considering it’s nearing the end of August. Generally the summer months tend to be slower business wise as many people take vacation and do other things. When school starts in the fall, then things pick up again. That is why I find it unusual that I am busier than I normally am.
I have been looking at the various menus available on Excel in an attempt to find something that I really have not talked about before. There is one function that I use in a manner that is either feast of famine. I use it all the time or not at all. Anyway, I thought this might be a good tool to talk about as it is a real time saver and often, when I am working with downloaded files or files from other people, this tool comes in handy to get the data the way I want it.
On the menu bar and located in the drop down menu titled Data is the item called Text to Columns. Text to Columns allows the user to separate data into separate fields. It has two ways to do so, but for the purposes of this post I am going to stick to the Fixed Width method. The other method, Delimited works similar to CSV functionality, so we may discuss that later.
Back to the Fixed Width method. I have created an example just by typing in my name into one field and copying it down a few rows. This is to just demonstrate what is done.
Before changing to two columns
Select the items you wish to separate into different columns. Depending on how many items you need to separate make sure you have the same amount of blank columns less the initial data following the data you are going to separate. In this case I want to separate my data into two columns so I need one column blank to the right of my data.
You can only select one column of data, trying to do two or more will not work with this function.
Once the items are selected go to the menu item Data and select Text to Columns.
Column data selected
Choose Fixed Width and click next.
Chose Fixed Width
This screen will give you the ability to separate your data. Click in the blank space between the information you wish to separate. A line with an arrow at the top will appear between your data. If you wish to remove a line, double click on that line to remove it.
Lines to seperate out data
Excel will try to help you by inserting lines between the data. Usually that will leave a space before the next piece of data, so I generally will remove the auto filled lines and replace with my own line just in front of the next piece of data.
Once you have your lines the way you like them, you have the option, by pushing next to see what Excel will do with the data. I generally find this to be useless, and simply press finish to complete the task.
Finally, you now have your data separated and ready for use the way you feel you need to use it.
The data now seperated into two columns
