# Converting text to table in Excel

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-text-to-table-in-excel/727122>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 6, 2015, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-text-to-table-in-excel/727122 "2015-08-06T02:11:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Cardboard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/49beb7/32.png) [@Cardboard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardboard)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2015, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-text-to-table-in-excel/727122/1 "2015-08-06T02:11:59Z")

</div>

Here is an example of a line of text I want to convert to table.

Nick Adenhart 4/9/09 4/8/09 Car Crash

I want the table to look like this (I entered this in manually):

[![](http://tinypic.com/images/goodbye.jpg) ](http://tinypic.com/images/goodbye.jpg)

I have Excel 2007.

How might one do that?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2015, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/converting-text-to-table-in-excel/727122/2 "2015-08-06T02:19:30Z")

</div>

I can come up with a couple of ways but I’m sure people with better computer skills will come later and have better ones.

The simplest one of mine: import the text file telling Excel to separate into columns whenever there is a space. This separates Nick - Adenhart - date - date - word - word…  
Join the name and lastname in another column with the formula =(namecell&" "&lastnamecell) where namecell and lastnamecell are the actual cells, do the same with the description columns.