Question

Is there a built in function (as opposed to a UDF) or can someone provide sample code to split a String to two columns when a character is encountered?
Sample:

1234:abcd

split the above string into 1234 and abcd into two columns

Answer 1

Title/tag mismatch?

For Excel, if A1 contains the value:

make B1 =LEFT(A1,IF(ISERROR(FIND(":",A1)),LEN(A1),FIND(":",A1)-1))
make C1 =RIGHT(A1,IF(ISERROR(FIND(":",A1)),0,LEN(A1)-FIND(":",A1)))

Or for T-SQL + a string variable;

DECLARE @F VARCHAR(64) = '1234:ABCD'

IF @F LIKE '%:%' 
    SELECT SUBSTRING(@F, 1, CHARINDEX(':', @F, 1) - 1) AS COL1, 
            SUBSTRING(@F, CHARINDEX(':', @F, 1) + 1, LEN(@F)) AS COL2
ELSE
    SELECT @F AS COL1, NULL AS COL2

for a select;

;WITH faketable (fld) AS (
    SELECT 'aaa:123' as fld
    UNION SELECT 'ddddd'
)
SELECT 
    CASE WHEN fld LIKE '%:%' THEN SUBSTRING(fld, 1, CHARINDEX(':', fld, 1) - 1) ELSE fld END AS COL1 ,
    CASE WHEN fld LIKE '%:%' THEN SUBSTRING(fld, CHARINDEX(':', fld, 1) + 1, LEN(fld)) ELSE NULL END AS COL2 
FROM faketable

>COL1   COL2
>aaa    123
>ddddd  NULL