Excel separated with comma

Text to Columns

1. Highlight the column that contains your list.
2. Go to Data > Text to Columns.
3. Choose Delimited. Click Next.
4. Choose Comma. Click Next.
5. Choose General or Text, whichever you prefer.
6. Leave Destination as is, or choose another column. Click Finish.

How do I separate a row in Excel with a comma?

In the Split Cells dialog box, select Split to Rows or Split to Columns in the Type section as you need. And in the Specify a separator section, select the Other option, enter the comma symbol into the textbox, and then click the OK button.

How do I split one column into multiple columns in Excel?

How to Split one Column into Multiple Columns

1. Select the column that you want to split.
2. From the Data ribbon, select “Text to Columns” (in the Data Tools group).
3. Here you’ll see an option that allows you to set how you want the data in the selected cells to be delimited.
4. Click Next.

How do I add comma separated values to a csv file?

Since CSV files use the comma character “,” to separate columns, values that contain commas must be handled as a special case. These fields are wrapped within double quotation marks. The first double quote signifies the beginning of the column data, and the last double quote marks the end.

Can I split a column in Excel?

Split the content from one cell into two or more cells
Note: Excel for the web doesn’t have the Text to Columns Wizard. Instead, you can Split text into different columns with functions.On the Data tab, in the Data Tools group, click Text to Columns. The Convert Text to Columns Wizard opens.

How do I separate columns in Excel?

In the table, click the cell that you want to split. Click the Layout tab. In the Merge group, click Split Cells. In the Split Cells dialog, select the number of columns and rows that you want and then click OK.

How do you convert a column to a comma separated list?

How to convert an Excel column into a comma separated list?

1. Open your excel sheet and select the cells of the column that you want to process.
2. Now open word document, right click on it and from the context menu, select ‘Paste Options’ as ‘Keep texts only’.
3. Now press ‘CTRL + H’ to open the ‘Find and Replace’ dialog.

Is comma delimited the same as comma Separated?

A comma delimited file is one where each value in the file is separated by a comma. Also known as a Comma Separated Value file, a comma delimited file is a standard file type that a number of different data-manipulation programs can read and understand, including Microsoft Excel.

How do you format a comma in Excel?

To enable the comma in any cell, select Format Cells from the right-click menu and, from the Number section, check the box of Use 1000 separator (,). We can also use the Home menu ribbons’ Commas Style under the number section.

How do you split a column?

Try it!

1. Select the cell or column that contains the text you want to split.
2. Select Data > Text to Columns.
3. In the Convert Text to Columns Wizard, select Delimited > Next.
4. Select the Delimiters for your data.
5. Select Next.
6. Select the Destination in your worksheet which is where you want the split data to appear.

How do you split a column by space in Excel?

Click the “Data” tab in the ribbon, then look in the “Data Tools” group and click “Text to Columns.” The “Convert Text to Columns Wizard” will appear. In step 1 of the wizard, choose “Delimited” > Click [Next]. A delimiter is the symbol or space which separates the data you wish to split.

How do I split a column in sheets?

Split data into columns

1. On your computer, open a spreadsheet in Google Sheets.
2. At the top, click Data.
3. To change which character Sheets uses to split the data, next to “Separator” click the dropdown menu.
4. To fix how your columns spread out after you split your text, click the menu next to “Separator”

How do you separate data in Excel formula?

If you ever need to split data from one column in your Microsoft Excel worksheet into two or more columns, you can use the LEFT, MID and RIGHT Text functions.
To extract the Account Number using the MID function.

1. Select cell C2 .
2. Enter the formula: =MID(A2,5,3)
3. Copy the formula down.

How do I separate text in Excel formula?

1st method
You can do so, click on the header ( A , B , C , etc.). Then click the little triangle and select “Insert 1 right”. Repeat to create a second free column. In the first free column, write =SPLIT(B1,”-“) , with B1 being the cell you want to split and – the character you want the cell to split on.

How do you use concatenate?

There are two ways to do this:

1. Add double quotation marks with a space between them ” “. For example: =CONCATENATE(“Hello”, ” “, “World!”).
2. Add a space after the Text argument. For example: =CONCATENATE(“Hello “, “World!”). The string “Hello ” has an extra space added.

How do you paste comma Separated Values in sheets?

3 Answers

1. Open a spreadsheet in Google Sheets.
2. Paste the data you want to split into columns.
3. In the bottom right corner of your data, click the Paste icon.
4. Click Split text to columns. Your data will split into different columns.
5. To change the delimiter, in the separator box, click.

How do you split names in Excel?

How to Separate Names in Excel?

1. Step 1: Select the “full name” column.
2. Step 2: In the Data tab, click on the option “text to columns.
3. Step 3: The box “convert text to columns wizard” opens.
4. Step 4: Select the file type “delimited” and click on “next.”

How do you split Data in a spreadsheet?

Select the text or column, then click the Data menu and select Split text to columns…. Google Sheets will open a small menu beside your text where you can select to split by comma, space, semicolon, period, or custom character. Select the delimiter your text uses, and Google Sheets will automatically split your text.

How do I change data in Excel to comma separated text?

You can convert an Excel worksheet to a text file by using the Save As command.

1. Go to File > Save As.
2. Click Browse.
3. In the Save As dialog box, under Save as type box, choose the text file format for the worksheet; for example, click Text (Tab delimited) or CSV (Comma delimited).

What is a comma separated list?

A comma-separated list is produced for a structure array when you access one field from multiple structure elements at a time. For instance if S is a 5-by-1 structure array then S.name is a five-element comma-separated list of the contents of the name field.

How do you convert a list to a comma separated string?

Approach: This can be achieved with the help of join() method of String as follows.

1. Get the List of String.
2. Form a comma separated String from the List of String using join() method by passing comma ‘, ‘ and the list as parameters.
3. Print the String.

When data is imported into Excel it can be in many formats depending on the source application that has provided it.

For example, it could contain names and addresses of customers or employees, but this all ends up as a continuous text string in one column of the worksheet, instead of being separated out into individual columns e.g. name, street, city.

You can split the data by using a common delimiter character. A delimiter character is usually a comma, tab, space, or semi-colon. This character separates each chunk of data within the text string.

A big advantage of using a delimiter character is that it does not rely on fixed widths within the text. The delimiter indicates exactly where to split the text.

You may need to split the data because you may want to sort the data using a certain part of the address or to be able to filter on a particular component. If the data is used in a pivot table, you may need to have the name and address as different fields within it.

This article shows you eight ways to split the text into the component parts required by using a delimiter character to indicate the split points.

Sample Data

The above sample data will be used in all the following examples. Download the example file to get the sample data plus the various solutions for extracting data based on delimiters.

Excel Functions to Split Text

There are several Excel functions that can be used to split and manipulate text within a cell.

LEFT Function

The LEFT function returns the number of characters from the left of the text.

Syntax

= LEFT ( Text, [Number] )

• Text – This is the text string that you wish to extract from. It can also be a valid cell reference within a workbook.
• Number [Optional] – This is the number of characters that you wish to extract from the text string. The value must be greater than or equal to zero. If the value is greater than the length of the text string, then all characters will be returned. If the value is omitted, then the value is assumed to be one.

RIGHT Function

The RIGHT function returns the number of characters from the right of the text.

Syntax

= RIGHT ( Text, [Number] )

The parameters work in the same way as for the LEFT function described above.

FIND Function

The FIND function returns the position of specified text within a text string. This can be used for locating a delimiter character. Note that the search is case-sensitive.

Syntax

= FIND (SubText, Text, [Start])

• SubText – This is a text string that you want to search for.
• Text – This is the text string which is to be searched.
• Start [Optional] – The starting position for the search.

LEN Function

The LEN function will give the length by number of characters of a text string.

Syntax

= LEN ( Text )

• Text – This is the text string of which you want to determine the character count.

Extracting Data with the LEFT, RIGHT, FIND and LEN Functions

Using the first row (B3) of the sample data, these functions can be combined to split a text string into sections using a delimiter character.

= FIND ( ",", B3 )

You use the FIND function to get the position of the first delimiter character. This will return the value 18.

= LEFT ( B3, FIND( ",", B3 ) - 1 )

You can then use the LEFT function to extract the first component of the text string.

Note that FIND gets the position of the first delimiter, but you need to subtract 1 from it so as to not include the delimiter character.

This will return Tabbie O’Hallagan.

= RIGHT ( B3, LEN ( B3 ) - FIND ( ",", B3 ) )

It is more complicated to get the next components of the text string. You need to remove the first component from the text by using the above formula.

This formula takes the length of the original text, finds the first delimiter position, which then calculates how many characters are left in the text string after that delimiter.

The RIGHT function then truncates off all the characters up to and including that first delimiter so that the text string gets shorter and shorter as each delimiter character is found.

This will return 056 Dennis Park, Greda, Croatia, 44273

You can now use FIND to locate the next delimiter and the LEFT function to extract the next component, using the same methodology as above.

Repeat for all delimiters, and this will split the text string into component parts.

FILTERXML Function as a Dynamic Array

If you’re using Excel for Microsoft 365, then you can use the FILTERXML function to split text with output as a dynamic array.

You can split a text string by turning it into an XML string by changing the delimiter characters to XML tags. This way you can use the FILTERXML function to extract data.

XML tags are user defined, but in this example, s will represent a sub-node and t will represent the main node.

= "<t><s>" & SUBSTITUTE ( B2, ",", "</s><s>" ) & "</s></t>"

Use the above formula to insert the XML tags into your text string.

<t><s>Name</s><s>Street</s><s>City</s><s>Country</s><s>Post Code</s></t>

This will return the above formula in the example.

Note that each of the nodes defined is followed by a closing node with a backslash. These XML tags define the start and finish of each section of the text, and effectively act in the same way as delimiters.

=TRANSPOSE(
    FILTERXML(
        "<t><s>" &
        SUBSTITUTE(
            B3,
            ",",
            "</s><s>"
        ) & "</s></t>",
        "//s"
    )
)

The above formula will insert the XML tags into the original string and then use these to split out the items into an array.

As seen above, the array will spill each item into a separate cell. Using the TRANSPOSE function causes the array to spill horizontally instead of vertically.

FILTERXML Function to Split Text

If your version of Excel doesn’t have dynamic arrays, then you can still use the FILTERXML function to extract individual items.

= FILTERXML (
    "<t><s>" &
    SUBSTITUTE (
        B3,
        ",",
        "</s><s>"
    ) & "</s></t>",
    "//s"
)

You can now break the string into sections using the above FILTERXML formula.

This will return the first section Tabbie O’Hallagan.

= FILTERXML (
    "<t><s>" &
    SUBSTITUTE (
        B3,
        ",",
        "</s><s>"
    ) & "</s></t>",
    "//s[2]"
)

To return the next section, use the above formula.

This will return the second section of the text string 056 Dennis Park.

You can use this same pattern to return any part of the sample text, just change the [2] found in the formula accordingly.

Flash Fill to Split Text

Flash Fill allows you to put in an example of how you want your data split.

You can check out this guide on using flash fill to clean your data for more details.

You then select the first cell of where you want your data to split and click on Flash Fill. Excel will populate the remaining rows from your example.

Using the sample data, enter Name into cell C2, then Tabbie O’Hallagan into cell C3.

Flash fill should automatically fill in the remaining data names from the sample data. If it doesn’t, you can select cell C4, and click on the Flash Fill icon in the Data Tools group of the Data tab of the Excel ribbon.

Similarly, you can add Street into cell D2, City into cell E2, Country into cell F2, and Post Code into cell G2.

Select the subsequent cells (D2 to G2) individually, and click on the Flash Fill icon. The rest of the text components will be populated into these columns.

Text to Columns Command to Split Text

This Excel functionality can be used to split text in a cell into sections based on a delimiter character.

1. Select the entire sample data range (B2:B12).
2. Click on the Data tab in the Excel ribbon.
3. Click on the Text to Columns icon in the Data Tools group of the Excel ribbon and a wizard will appear to help you set up how the text will be split.
4. Select Delimited on the option buttons.
5. Press the Next button.

1. Select Comma as the delimiter, and uncheck any other delimiters.
2. Press the Next button.
3. The Data Preview window will display how your data will be split. Choose a location to place the output.
4. Click on Finish button.

Your data will now be displayed in columns on your worksheet.

Convert the Data into a CSV File

This will only work with commas as delimiters, since a CSV (comma separated value) file depends on commas to separate the values.

Open Notepad and copy and paste the sample data into it. You can open Notepad by typing Notepad into the search box at the left of the Windows task bar or locate it in the application list.

Once you have copied the data into Notepad, save it off by using File ➜ Save As from the menu. Enter a filename with a .csv suffix e.g. Split Data.csv.

You can then open this file in Excel. Select the csv file in the browser file type drop down and click OK. Your data will automatically appear with each component in separate columns.

VBA to Split Text

VBA is the programming language that sits behind Excel and allows you to write your own code to manipulate data, or to even create your own functions.

To access the Visual Basic Editor (VBE), you use Alt + F11.

Sub SplitText()

Dim MyArray() As String, Count As Long, i As Variant

For n = 2 To 12
	MyArray = Split(Cells(n, 2), ",")
	Count = 3
	For Each i In MyArray
		Cells(n, Count) = i
		Count = Count + 1
	Next i
Next n

End Sub

Click on Insert in the menu bar, and click on Module. A new pane will appear for the module. Paste in the above code.

This code creates a single dimensional array called MyArray. It then iterates through the sample data (rows 2 to 12) and uses the VBA Split function to populate MyArray.

The split function uses a comma delimiter, so that each section of the text becomes an element of the array.

A counter variable is set to 3 which represents column C, which will be the first column for the split data to be displayed.

The code then iterates through each element in the array and populates each cell with the element. Cell references are based on n for the row, and Count for the column.

The variable Count is incremented in each loop so that the data fills across the row, and then downwards.

Power Query to Split Text

Power Query in Excel allows a column to be manipulated into sections using a delimiter character.

Related posts:

• Introduction to power query
• Power query tips and tricks
• Introduction to power query M code

The first thing to do is to define your data source, which is the sample data that you entered into you Excel worksheet.

Click on the Data tab in the Excel ribbon, and then click on Get Data in the Get & Transform Data group of the ribbon.

Click on From File in the first drop down, and then click on From Workbook in the second drop down.

This will display a file browser. Locate your sample data file (the file that you have open) and click on OK.

A navigation pop-up will be displayed showing all the worksheets within your workbook. Click on the worksheet which has the sample data and this will show a preview of the data.

Expand the tree of data in the left-hand pane to show the preview of the existing data.

Click on Transform Data and this will display the Power Query Editor.

Make sure that the single column with the data in it is highlighted. Click on the Split Column icon in the Transform group of the ribbon. Click on By Delimiter in the drop down that appears.

This will display a pop-up window which allows you to select your delimiter. The default is a comma.

Click OK and the data will be transformed into separate columns.

Click on Close and Load in the Close group of the ribbon, and a new worksheet will be added to your workbook with a table of the data in the new format.

Power Pivot Calculated Column to Split Text

You can use Power Pivot to split the text by using calculated columns.

Click on the Power Pivot tab in the Excel ribbon and then click on the Add to Data Model icon in the Tables group.

Your data will be automatically detected and a pop-up will show the location. If this is not the correct location, then it can be re-set here.

Leave the My table has headers check box un-ticked in the pop-up, as we want to split the header as well.

Click on OK and a preview screen will be displayed.

Right-click on the header for your data column (Column1) and click on Insert Column in the pop-up menu. This will insert a calculated column where a formula can be entered.

= LEFT ( [Column1], FIND ( ",", [Column1] ) - 1 )

In the formula bar, insert the above formula.

This works in a similar way to the functions described in method 1 of this article.

This formula will provide the Name component within the text string.

Insert another calculated column using the same methodology as the first calculated column.

= LEFT (
    RIGHT ( [Column1], LEN ( [column1] ) - LEN ( [Calculated Column 1] ) - 1 ),
    FIND (
        ",",
        RIGHT ( [Column1], LEN ( [column1] ) - LEN ( [Calculated Column 1] ) - 1 )
    ) - 1
)

Insert the above formula into the formula bar.

This is a complicated formula, and you may wish to break it into sections using several calculated columns.

This will provide the Street component in the text string.

You can continue modifying the formula to create calculated columns for all the other components of the text string.

The problem with a pivot table is that it needs a numeric value as well as text values. As the sample data is text only, a numeric value needs to be added.

Click on the first cell in the Add Column column and enter the formula =1 in the formula bar.

This will add the value of 1 all the way down that column. Click on the Pivot Table icon in the Home tab of the ribbon.

Click on Pivot Table in the pop-up menu. Specify the location of your pivot table in the first pop-up window and click OK. If the Pivot Table Fields pane does not automatically display, right click on the pivot table skeleton and select Show Field List.
Click on the Calculated Columns in the Field List and place these in the Rows window.

our pivot table will now show the individual components of the text string.

Conclusions

Dealing with comma or other delimiter separated data can be a big pain if you don’t know how to extract each item into its own cell.

Thankfully, Excel has quite a few options that will help with this common task.

Which one do you prefer to use?

Home / Excel Basics / How to Apply Comma Style in Excel

The comma style in Excel is also known as the thousand separator format that converts the large number values with the commas inserted as separators to distinguish the number value length into thousands, hundred thousand, millions, and so on.

When the user applies the comma format, it also adds decimal values to the numbers. So, in short, it works similarly to an accounting system format but it does not add any currency symbol to the number which accounting system formatting does.

The comma style separator could show the number values separated into lakhs or in million formats depending upon the region and default currency format selected within your system, but you can change it from lakhs to million and vice versa.

Like India follows a number value accounting system in lakhs and USA follows in millions. We have quick and easy steps mentioned below for you to apply comma style in Excel.

Apply Comma Style Using the Home tab

1. First, select the cells or range of cells or the entire column where to apply the comma style.
   
2. After that, go to the “Home” tab and click on the comma (,) icon under the “Number” group on the ribbon.
   
3. Once you click on the comma (,) icon, your selected range will get applied with comma separators in the number values.
   

To increase or remove the decimal values from the numbers, simply select the range and then click on the “Increase or Decrease decimal value” icon under the same “Number” group on the ribbon.

Apply Comma Style Using Format Cells Option

1. First, select the cells or range of cells or the entire column where to apply the comma style.
2. After that, right click on the mouse and select the “Format Cells” option from the drop-down list.
   
3. Once you click on “Format Cells” you will get the “Format Cells” dialog box opened.
4. Now, under the “Number” tab, select the “Number” option and then checkmark the “Use 1000 Separator” box.
5.  In the end, Click OK, and your selected range will get applied with comma separators in the number values.
6. To remove the decimal values, enter zero (0) in the “Decimal places” field.
   

Change the Comma Style Separators from Lakhs to Million format

Sometimes, comma separators show numbers values separated in lakhs due to the default region and currency format of your system, but can change the currency format to millions format by following the below steps:

1. First, go to your system “Control Panel” and click on the “Change date, time, or number formats” link under the “Clock and Region” or “Region and Language” option. (Option names could be different depending on the Windows version)
   
2. After that, click on “Additional Settings” within the “Region” dialog box.
   
3. Once you click on “Additional Settings”, you will get the “Customize Format” dialog box opened.
4. Now, select the “Currency” header and then select the format to million style format of separator commas option in digit grouping.
5. In the end, click Apply and then Ok within the “Customize Format” dialog box and then in the “Region” dialog box.
   
6. Once you are done, close and open the Excel file again and apply comma style and you will get your selected range will get applied with comma separators in thousand, hundred thousand, and million to the number values.
   

Apply Comma Style Using Keyboard Shortcut

Select the entire column or the range where to apply comma style and then press the Alt+ H + K keys and you will get your selected range applied with comma separators.