Help trying to align cells by symbol / character

Hi all,

I'm trying to replicate a table format from a paper,

They have centre aligned the following cells by the ± symbol. I have searched online and only found aligning by decimal.

Example input (1 column, 3 rows)
536 ± 49.2
68.4 ± 48
502.9 ± 39.4

I would be very grateful for any advice!

Edit For those interested the Table I'm trying to copy is here http://link.springer.com/article/10....-0690-4#page-1

Update: Solved!

Alex Frolov, http://superuser.com/questions/97654...ls-by-a-symbol

Please create the helper column with the following formula

=REPT(" ",10-FIND("±",A1))&A1

where A1 - your original string and 10 - the maximal number of characters before "±" in your data

Then apply the monotype font (e.g. "Courier new") to this column

The link you supplied is to an academic repository. None of us have a subscription to it.

With that being said, just create a table with 3 columns instead of one.
- Put the ± in the center column and format the column width. Select the cell with the symbol and press Alt, H, O, I to automatically adjust the column width.
- Place your other values in their respective spots and right align the cells to the left of the ±, and left align the values to the right.

The linked page does not show a table like this. Perhaps you have to buy the article to see the table.

I don't think it's possible to put those strings into a single cell and have it treated as numeric data. If you put them in as strings there is no way to center it about the ± sign. I would use three columns. See attached.

What is the reason that you must use only 1 column?