Opposite of Concatenate in Excel

What is Opposite of Concatenate in Excel?

In our earlier article “Concatenate Strings in Excel” we have seen how to combine values of more than one cell into one with various practical examples. Have you ever thought about what would be the complete opposite of concatenate in excel?

Yes, we could do the opposite of concatenate in excel. We have several methods to do this job and in this article, we will take you through the process of splitting one cell data into multiple cells.

How to do the Opposite of Concatenate in Excel?

Below are the examples of excel opposite to concatenate.

Method #1 – Split Values by Using Text Functions

One of the popular ways of splitting one cell value into multiple cells is using excel text functions. Popular text functions are “Left function, Right function, and MID function in excel”. For example, if you have the full name of employees then we can split the names into first name and last name.

I am using the below data for this example.

We have the full name of cricketers here. We need to first extract the first name here, this can be done by applying the LEFT function in Excel.

LEFT function alone cannot do the job here because once the value to be split is selected we need to specify the number of characters we need to extract from the left side of selected data. In this example first name characters of all the cricketers have a different number of characters, so we need to employ FIND excel function

Using Find we can find the space character position in the selected value. For example in the name “Sachin Tendulkar” space character position is 7, so 7 – 1 = 6, this is the number of characters we need from the left side of the name “Sachin Tendulkar”.

In the number of characters argument open FIND function.

Find Text is what we need to find, in this example we need to find space character, so supply space in double-quotes.

Within Text means in which text we need to find the space, so this is our full name i.e. A2 cell.

The last parameter is irrelevant so ignore that. So now FIND function will return space character position as 7 but we don’t need space character so apply -1 for FIND function.

Close the bracket and hit the enter key. Wow!! We got the first name.

Drag the formula to rest of cells.

Now we will see how to get a second or last name. Open RIGHT function in excel.

In the number of characters argument, we cannot manually supply the number. Even here also we need to employ two other functions to get the number of characters.

Here we need to use FIND & LEN function in Excel.

LEN function will return the total number of characters in the selected value and FIND will return the space character position. So, LEN – FIND is the number of characters we need from the right-hand side.

We got the last name.

Drag the formula to other cells to get the result.

For an example in the name “Virat Kohli” total number of characters including zero is 11 and space character position is 5. So 11 – 5 = 6, so a total number of characters we need from the right side is 6 i.e. “Kohli”.

So, like this, we can do the opposite of concatenate in excel. We can do the opposite of concatenating with another method as well i.e. “Text to Column”.

Method #2 – Opposite of Concatenate Through Text to Column

This is the best example of a simple procedure. This method doesn’t involve any kind of complex formulas. We will see this in the below example.

The above data should be in the below format.

This looks like one hell of a task, isn’t it???

But actual work is easier than we assume. By using the one common thing which is combining this data we can split accordingly. In this case, the common thing which is combining different columns into one is a comma (,).

Select the data first.

Go to Data > Text to Column in excel or else you can press the excel shortcut key ALT + A + E.

We will see below the window when we click on Text to Column.

By selecting “Delimited” click on “Next”.

Now in the next window, we need to select the Delimiter i.e. the common thing which is combining all the columns into one. In this case “Comma” so select comma.

Click on Next and click on Finish in the next window. We will get the opposite of the concatenate.

So, like this, we can use functions and Text to Column in excel to do the opposite of concatenate.

Recommended Articles

This has been a guide to Opposite of Concatenate in Excel. Here we discuss the top 2 methods to reverse concatenate 1) Text Functions and 2) Text to Column method in Excel with examples and downloadable excel template. You may learn more about excel from the following articles –

• Excel AVERAGEIFS Function
• Count Characters in Excel Cell
• Substitute Formula in Excel
• Combine Cells in Excel