4 ms·
If you do not know what flash fill is, like me, this page shows a video of the feature: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/save-time-with-flash-fill-91
by MrHus 5y ago
If you do not know what flash fill is, like me, this page shows a video of the feature:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/save-time-with-flash-fill-9159216a-75a0-4c11-82e6-8eca29cb3b89 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/save-time-with-fl...
- duskwuff 5y agoAlternatively, this video: https://youtu.be/fRjsK-NXVEA https://youtu.be/fRjsK-NXVEA (Key word: "Maruary".)
- sumitgulwani 5y agoCool find! The 100-second video segment starting at 10:43 in this link that I am sharing would be more fun: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=421gU482xFE&t=643s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=421gU482xFE&t=643s>
- willhinsa 5y agoSeems like a lot more work than doing Data > Text to Columns :)
- II2II 5y agoAs someone who has been handling delimited text for decades, Text to Columns is the most natural approach. That being said, different people have different backgrounds and approach problems from different angles. Flash Fill may be more appropriate in their cases.
- sumitgulwani 5y agoYes, text to Columns would work well for splitting tasks in a very uniform dataset. However, if you want to extract say Lastname from a column containing names some of which may have middle names (i.e., the dataset is not very uniform), then text to columns would not work correctly. Also, if you would like to do more than substring extraction, say convert "FirstName LastName" into "f.l." or "lastname, firstname", then Text2Columns won't be sufficient by itself. You would need to do more post-processing or would need a more sophisticated scripting capability.
- sumitgulwani 5y agoHere's an illustrative demo of the Flash Fill capability. Check out the 3 minute video segment starting at 4:30. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1YXge3C8RI&t=270s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1YXge3C8RI&t=270s>