Splitting an excel file into two columns

D

deininger

I was able to import my text files into a spreadsheet, but here is what
I need to do next and I hope there is an easier way to do this through
the program. Her is what I have, I have a product spreadsheet that
includes item number followed by the description. the item number is
always first and needs to be broken out into its own column with the
description in the next.

What I am wanting to know, how do I have excel grab the first part of
the column up until after the first space and leave that in one column
and put the rest of the information in a new column. That would allow
me to import into Access and key off the item number field.

Any and all help would be appreciated.

Michael
 
P

Pete_UK

Have you tried highlighting the column with the data in and clicking
Data | Text-to-columns? This will bring up a wizard and if you select
space as the delimiter it will split your data into different columns
wherever there is a space. This might mean that your description is
split into a few columns, but you can then re-combine these using the &
operator.

Hope this helps.

Pete
 
S

stars75238

I have not tried this yet, will do that now and see what happens. To
sound totally amatuer, how would I recombine hte columns? The reason I
ask is there are going to be about 1500 lines on the spredsheet, some
descriptions have 20 words, others have 5 and still others have 30. So
how can I do them all with one pass thourgh? Maybe run a concat
operation on the first 40 columns and let there be blanks in the
others? Makes sense to me, so it is probably wrong.

Pete thanks again for the suggestion, I am going to try this tomorrow.

Michael
 
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