Parsing Info in Cells

J

jayhawk1919

Lets say I'm taking information from the internet, so I copy and past i
into Excel.

In one of the cells it says a number, then a dash, then a number.
Ex. 10-18

But I want them to behave independantly. So that theoretically,
could have one cell read 10 and another read 18. Or sometimes have i
read 10 divided by 18.

I'm pretty sure there's a way to do this, I just don't know how.

Thanks in Advance
 
L

Lloyd H. London

Simplest way would be to convert text to columns from the Data menu,
using the dash as a delimiter.
 
D

Dave Peterson

I don't think that's 10 divided by 18. I think it's a date (Oct 18 of the
current year).

If you retrieve one cell at a time, you can format the cell as text and paste
into the formula bar. It'll still be in one cell, but then you can use
Data|Text to columns that Lloyd suggested.

Or you could use a couple of helper cells:
=LEFT(A1,FIND("/",A1)-1)
and
=MID(A1,FIND("/",A1)+1,255)

The first will return the 10 (as text)
and the second will return the 18 (as text).
 
J

jayhawk1919

Using the Text to column actually seems like it would work, so thanks.

However it seems I jumped too quickly. When I try and paste the table
in, it automatically converts the 10-18 to October 18th. How do I get
it to just leave it as 10-18, so I can make it a new column?
 
J

jayhawk1919

Hm?

I saw those replies. What I meant was that, they told me how to
seperate it into 2 colums if you have 10-18. And thats what I needed
to know...to a point.

Thats only useful if when I paste the 10-18 into excel it doesn't
automatically change it to 10/18/2003.

So I was wondering is there a way to stop it from flipping to the date
when I paste it in?
 
J

jayhawk1919

Ack, it still doesn't work. Seems that when you paste it overrides any
cell formatting you give it. And I can't put it into the forumula bar,
because its a more than one cell thing. In fact it's about 20x20 table
that I'm pasting, and one of the columns contains thouse "x-x" numbers,
like 5-15 or something. But it automatically changes it to a date no
matter what!


Is there a way in preferences or something to change it so that it
doesn't automatically change things to date when you paste?
 
I

Interested Party

Have you tried Edit> Paste Special after copying from the web page?

When I use this option (on Excel '97) after copying from a website, I get
the option to paste as text, unicode text or HTML format. If I select the
text option, I can then use Data> Text to Columns to break it up the way I
want it -- and it deals with ALL of it as text.

HTH,
Steve


jayhawk1919 said:
Hm?

I saw those replies. What I meant was that, they told me how to
seperate it into 2 colums if you have 10-18. And thats what I needed
to know...to a point.

Thats only useful if when I paste the 10-18 into excel it doesn't
automatically change it to 10/18/2003.

So I was wondering is there a way to stop it from flipping to the date
when I paste it in?
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