Question

I have a spreadsheet, and the cells in the sheet have their data in the form of (x(n),y(n))… those are subscripts.

For example, the first 3 cells in the 1st column have data that looks like this: (1, 2),(123, 1231), and (12, 1231). This is great, since the pair of numbers in each cell can be thought of as coordinates in some cases. However, for a lot of my work I would like to break this data out so that each x(n) and y(n) have their own cell. This process should double the number of columns in my table.

Original:

Column A
(1, 2)
(123, 1231)
(12, 1231)

Intended:

Column B     Column C
1            2
123          1231
12           1231

The original set gets split into two columns; the first having 1, 123, and 12 populating the cells, while the next column aligns with 2, 1231, 1231. Does anyone know how I can do this in Excel?

Answer 1

This function extract the number on the left of the comma

=LEFT(A1,FIND(",",A1)-1)

and this one the part on the right

=RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-FIND(",",A1))

EDIT. Sorry, if you have also parentheses my functions become

=LEFT(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"(",""),")",""),FIND(",",A1)-2)

for the left part and

=TRIM(SUBSTITUTE(RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-FIND(",",A1)),")",""))

for the right one.