How To Split Cells In A Spreadsheet

Have you ever had a spreadsheet where you'd really like to split a cell that contains multiple data points (last name, first name) into individual cells with only one data point each? I know that I used to use this a lot for taking my class roster and separating the last and first names. Today I'm going to show you how to use the Text to Columns feature, in both Google Sheets, and Microsoft Excel to do just that.

Google Sheets:

As you might expect, with Google Sheets generally being a simplified version of Excel, the process of splitting text to columns is fairly simple.

1. Right click on the column to the right of the column that contains the text you'd like to split.
2. Choose the option Insert 1 left; you're going to need to do this for each additional word. Since I will end up with two separate words in this example, I only need to do this step once as I only need one extra cell.
3. Highlight the cells that you want to split.
4. Click the Data heading from the toolbar.
5. Click Split text to columns. This will take the first name and place it into the second column that you just added.

Tip of the Week - May the 4th be with you!

Happy Star Wars day to everyone! Today's tip has to do more with general time savings rather than a specific tip for one of our commonly used programs. Most computer mice now a days have a scroll wheel, or some part that allows you to scroll up and down on the computer screen. I've been using mine for quite some time, but it wasn't until recently that I started using one of the functions of the scroll wheel - the double click.

Tip of the Week 4/25/16

Last week's Tip of the Week is a little late, I got all set to write it and then noticed that many of the images that I'd uploaded in previous posts had disappeared and spent the afternoon chasing down the missing images. Hopefully things will go more smoothly from now on.

I wanted talk about keyboard shortcuts this week. I've already told you about two timesaving shortcuts that I use on a daily basis, Ctrl+Tab (for moving between tabs) and Alt+Tab (for moving between open windows) you can see that post here.

Tip of the Week 4/15/16

I've decided that, in addition to blogging about educational technology in general, I'm going to start writing weekly tips for programs that we commonly use in our district, mostly centered around Illuminate, Skyward, and various Google programs that we have available to us. If you'd like to learn about something specific, feel free to send me requests and I'll add them to future Tip of the Week posts. 

Now, without further ado, here is this week's Tip of the Week...

Using the Tab Key to Quickly Enter Data