Jon Frank’s Weblog

Have you ever wanted to seperate the contents of one cell in your data into multiple cells? For example, I have an export from my database where the name of my constituents is located in 1 column, giving me both the first & last name in one cell. But I want to do a mail merge where I can address my letter using just their first name.

Currently this won’t work because Excel has both first & last name in the same cell. So I want to seperate them into 2 cells. This is where the Text To Columns command can save the day.

If you have Microsoft Excel 2007, the Office website at Microsoft has a great video tutorial walking you through the steps of using this command. You can find that tutorial at:
http://office.microsoft.com/home/video.aspx?assetid=ES102539721033&width=884&height=540&startindex=0&CTT=11&Origin=HA102474891033

If you’re using Excel 2003, don’t worry; that command is still available to you. Watch the tutorial, the wizard steps are the same in 2007 and 2003. But you’ll find the Text To Columns command under the Data menu in Excel 2003.