Pasting issues

**NH Dan** · 08-26-2011, 07:58 AM

Newbie here so please be gentle, especially as i'm no doubt going to ask some damn simple questions!!

I've been given some data in a report where the fileds are seperated by commas. If I try to paste this into an excel sheet so that the columns are all aligned, all of the data gets pasted in the one column and I can't find a way to seperate them out.

What am i doing wrong??

Cheers

Dan

**martindwilson** · 08-26-2011, 08:04 AM

use data/text to columns/delimited /choose comma as separator

**tigeravatar** · 08-26-2011, 08:04 AM

Dan,

There's a couple of options I would recommend. The first is to save the data as a .csv file, and then open it in excel. CSV = Comma Seperated Values and excel will automatically open it with the data split into columns based on the commas.

The other method is to paste it into excel as you've been doing so that you've got one column with lots of stuff. Then Data -> Text to Columns -> select "Delimited -> Next -> check "Comma" -> Finish

Hope that helps,
~tigeravatar

**Tim Challen** · 08-26-2011, 08:05 AM

Its something to do with importing a CSV (comma seperated values) file into your spreadsheet... as you can tell, I'm not expert either

*edit*

Damn, he beat me to it, and with a better answer...

**NH Dan** · 08-26-2011, 08:15 AM

Cheers guys!! thanks for your help here, most appreciated!

I'm dealing with shed loads of spreadsheets and problems at the mo so may well be back here very soon!!

Dan