Note the first and last name columns below:

Suppose you would like to join these columns so that the full name will appear in a separate column.  To make the new column with the full name, insert the cursor in the third column and type the first and last name for Bud Roberts. Press ENTER and begin typing the second name. You will see a transparent menu with a preview of suggested names:

Press ENTER to finish the column. You can also use the Flash Fill command on the DATA tab of the Ribbon.  In this example, the First Name and Last Name columns do not have to be adjacent to each other, but the column using the Flash Fill must be next to one of these columns for Excel to recognize the correct pattern. This same technique works when separating text within columns:

The data must be entered consistently; for example, if some first names had a middle initial and some did not, you might get some unexpected results. If you did not want to use the Flash Fill, press the ESC key and keep typing to ignore the transparent drop-down list.

NOTE: Even though the “Convert Text to Columns Wizard” can still be used to separate text into columns, and the CONCATENATE function can be used to join text,  the Flash Fill method  is much quicker and avoids placing any formulas within the cells.

To view your macro shortcut keys, on the View tab of the Ribbon, click the Macros button, select your macro, and choose Options….  You will see the Macro Options dialog box:

This dialog box shows the shortcut key.

Here you can view the macro shortcut and description, assign a shortcut, or modify the existing shortcut keys.  When revising shortcuts, it doesn’t matter whether you saved the macro in this workbook or in the Personal Macro workbook. Just make sure that you do not use an existing Excel keyboard shortcut (such as CTRL B, which bolds a cell). In addition, use a single letter with the CTRL or Shift keys.

Note: The CTRL + SHIFT + single letter keyboard combination may work best for a macro shortcut due to the many Excel shortcuts which already use the CTRL + single letter combinations.

Adding a Macro Button to the Quick Access Toolbar

Rather than creating a keyboard shortcut, you can add a macro button to the Quick Access Toolbar. (In Microsoft Office 2010, it is possible to add a new group to the Ribbon so you may prefer to add a Macro group that will include all of your macros).

To add a macro to the Quick Access Toolbar:

1. Open the Excel Options dialog box and click the Quick Access Toolbar link in the left pane. (If you want to add the macro to the Ribbon, choose Customize Ribbon. You will have the option to add a new group to the Ribbon to which you can add your macros).
2. In the “Choose Commands From” drop-down menu, select Macros. Excel macros, including your custom macros, will display.
3. Select the macros that you want to add to the Quick Access Toolbar, and click Add >>.  Note that there is a <Separator> at the top of the list, which you can add to separate the macros from other commands on the Quick Access Toolbar).
4. Then click the Modify… button at the bottom of the right pane if you want to rename the macro or if you want to select a different icon.

Once you click OK, the macros will appear on the Quick Access Toolbar and will always be available while you are working on that same computer.

Adding a Macro Button to the Worksheet

You can also add a macro button to the worksheet by following these steps:

1. On the Developer tab of the Ribbon, in the Controls group, click the Insert button. Choose  Button (Form Control).
2. Press and drag somewhere in the worksheet to create a button.
3. The Assign Macro dialog box appears, which displays all of your macros. Select the desired macro and click OK.
4. The button appears on the worksheet. You can change the text of the button while it is selected or at a later time, you can right-click the button and choose Edit Text. You can also format the button by right-clicking the button and choosing Format Control….

The text in cell D1 is much wider than that in other cells in column D

One way to show a cell’s text on multiple lines is to simply turn on word wrap for that cell. With the cell selected, click the Wrap Text icon on the Home tab of the Ribbon. Then you can let the column width dictate where the text wraps.

Word Wrap is turned on and the width of the column determines where the break occurs

Making the column more narrow changes the break points of the text:

A more narrow column changes how the text wraps in the cell

Note: You may have to manually adjust the row height to accommodate the fact that there are additional rows of text.

You can, however, use a different technique for word wrap in a way that gives you better control over the location of the break in the text. When you type text in the cell, indicate a break by holding the Alt key and pressing Enter. To get the same look as in cell D1 above, you could press Alt+Enter after the word Years and again after the word With. In this manner you are specifying the location of the wrap instead of allowing column width to determine that. Even if the column is widened again, the heading will still display as specified using Alt+Enter.

Other combinations of Alignment tools such as text rotation, word wrap, and orientation in cell offer more possibilities for text display. In the example below, cell D1 has word wrap turned on with text rotation set to “Rotate Text Up” and text alignment set to vertical center.

Text rotated to display up and wrap on 3 lines

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Saving as a Comma Delimited File

We will illustrate how to save Excel columns as a comma delimited file. The original data might look something like this:

0000011111         Bill
0000022222         Susie
0000033333         John
0000044444         Mary

NOTE: To display preceding zeros in a column, you can go to the Format Cells dialog box and choose Custom. On the right-hand side, scroll up (if necessary) and click the single 0. In the Type field, enter as many zeros as required digits (in this example, the number of zeros would equal 10).

To specify a file type, click Save as. (Only the active sheet can be saved in the .csv  format). In the Save as type field, choose .CSV Comma delimited (*.csv), and click Save. You may get a warning stating that there may be features incompatible with the comma delimited format, but you can save both versions of the file. (There is also an option to save in .csv format for the Macintosh).

Columns of data are separated by commas, and each row of data ends in a carriage return. If a cell contains a comma, the cell contents are enclosed in double quotation marks. Now when you open the file in an application such as Notepad, it will be a delimited text file with each field separated by a comma:

0000011111,Bill
0000022222,Susie
0000033333,John
0000044444,Mary

Transposing the Data in Rows

Another option might be to reorganize the data and place a column (or multiple columns) into rows, separated by commas. Excel can transpose the data to display horizontally rather than vertically. Just copy the data, place the cursor where you want the data pasted, and on the Home tab of the Ribbon, click the drop-down arrow under the Paste icon. Then select Paste Special. In the Paste Special dialog box, click Transpose. The two column(s) now will be displayed in two rows:

0000011111         0000022222         0000033333         0000044444
Bill                          Susie                     John                      Mary

After the file is saved in the .CSV  Comma delimited format, it will look like this:

0000011111,0000022222,0000033333,0000044444
Bill,Susie,John,Mary

Importing Text Files

You can open text files directly in Excel; however, if you want to modify some options, then use the Text Import Wizard. To access this Wizard when importing a text file, on the Excel Ribbon, go to the “From Text” command located in the Get External Data group and open the file. Follow instructions as you go through the steps in the Wizard to identify which row at which to begin the import and specify which delimiter is used. There is an option in the Wizard to change the columns of data to text format (instead of general format), which will preserve the preceding zeros.  You can also change data types for certain types of data or you can skip the import for certain columns. You can also preview the data to make sure that it will be imported correctly.

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The functions are UPPER, LOWER and PROPER. This function, =UPPER(A1) will convert the text in cell A1 to all upper case. Similarly, the function =LOWER(A1) converts all the text in cell A1 to lower case. The PROPER function converts just the first letter of the text in the designated cell to upper case.

The best way to convert a column of data is to:

1)      Back up the spreadsheet

2)      Insert a blank column to the right of the column holding the text you would like to change.

3)      In the first row of the new column place the function you need and referencing the cell where the text sits assuming here that my original text is in cell A1: =PROPER(A1)

Copy the function down the rest of the column

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