Question

I’ve got a column (with many thousands of rows) which I’d like to delimit into multiple rows. I have some experience using regular expressions in Excel, and I have some experience using delimiters in excel, but this one is just a tad too hard..

Let me give you three example-lines:

 - 23-12-05: For sale for 2000. 2010-09-09: Not found
 - 25-11-09: For sale for 3400. Last date found: 2010-07-08
 - 18-06-08: For sale for 5500. 21-07-09: Changed from 5500 to 4900. 16-09-09: Jumped from 4900 to 4700. 2010-02-04: Not found

Most other lines follow these structures. How can I create a new column based on just the first symbols before [COLON]; A second column based on the symbols between the first [COLON] and the first [DOT]. How can I continue to the last IF the text LAST DATE is not found? Finally: How can I use regex (or another way) to use the text ‘NOT FOUND’ to paste the last date into a new column?

Trust me, I have been at this for quite some time now (sigh). Any help is much appreciated!

Answer 1

you can actually use formulas for this.

Assuming the text is in A1,

B1: =LEFT(A1,FIND(":",A1)-1)
C1: =MID(A1,FIND(":",A1)+1,FIND(".",A1,FIND(":",A1))-FIND(":",A1))
D1: =MID(A1,FIND(".",A1,FIND(":",A1))+1,LEN(A1))
E1: =MID(A1,FIND("Not found",A1)-12,10)

(I’m assuming the date format does not change for the E1)