How to Decompose a Text in Excel

The text-to-column feature can help simplify mailing lists.

Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet program provides the text-to-column tool to simplify the process of decomposing strings of text. To decompose text is to break it up into smaller parts. You might need to break up a word or a sentence. Because Excel does not read and analyze your text, to use this tool, there must be some uniformity to the structure of your text. For example, to separate first and last names, you could split the text to columns using the space in the name.

Instructions

1. Open the Microsoft Excel document containing the text you would like to decompose.

2. Place the data in a column with empty columns to the right of it. Select the column containing the data you would like to decompose. Click the “Data” tab, then “Text to Columns” in the Data Tools section of the “Data” tab to open the Convert Text to Columns Wizard dialog box. According to your preference, choose “Delimited” or “Fixed width” radio button. The “Delimited” option splits text into columns when it encounters a character you specify. It can be a punctuation or space. The “Fixed width” option splits text into columns according to the number of characters you specify.

3. Skip this step if you chose “Fixed width.” Select the “Delimited” radio button and click the “Next” button. Select a single or multiple delimiters. You can select tabs, semicolons, commas, space, and any other character on the keyboard. Click the “Next” button. Click the “Text” radio button and click the “Finish” button.

4. Skip this step if you chose “Delimited.” Select the “Fixed width” radio button and click the “Next” button. In the visual representation of the data in the column, click the point at which you want the data to split into multiple columns. A line will appear where Excel plans to split the data. You can place multiple lines and drag the lines to customize where you want the breaks. Click the “Next” button. Click the “Text” radio button, and click the “Finish” button.

Tips & Warnings

• Your delimiter, whether it is a keyboard character, punctuation or space, will disappear when Excel splits the text to columns. For example, if you use “e” as the delimiter, “tell” becomes “t” in the first column and “ll” in the next column. The “e” is gone.

References

• Merriam-Webster Dictionary: Decompose
• Microsoft Office: Split Names by Using the Convert Text to Columns Wizard
• Microsoft Office: Distribute the Contents of a Cell Into Adjacent Columns

Resources

• Brainstorm, Inc.: Converting Text to Columns