Teacher Tech blog with Alice Keeler

Paperless Is Not a Pedagogy

Alice Keeler

Google Sheets: Text to Columns in a spreadsheet

Split Text Google Sheets
Google Sheets: Text to Columns in a spreadsheet

Split Text Google Sheets

Split Up Text in a Spreadsheet

When pasting text into a spreadsheet sometimes you do not want one cell to have all of the text. The best example being when you have first and last name in the same cell.

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Data Menu

Highlight the cells that have text you wish to split up. Use the Data menu to choose “Split text to columns.”

Data Menu Split text to columns

Sample Data: Click Here

Choose Separator

After selecting “Split text to columns” notice a subtle “Separator” menu on the highlighted cells. Click on the “Detect automatically” and switch to whatever delineator or separator you choose. In the case of first and last name your delineator will be “Space.” However, comma is a common separator. Whatever symbol you want to break up your text at.

Separator

Separator is Eaten

Note that when you choose the separator, it will be “eaten.” When I have last, first my separator is … comma space. When the text is split up by the comma space both the comma and space will no longer exist and I will be left with only the last name in the the one column and first name in the next column.

comma space


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