Guidance on Excel database functions

[mysterytramp]

Any advice here would be greatly appreciated ...

I have a table of about 800 entries:
Last name, first name, other fields, address

The address field includes street number, street name, town, state (these are NOT separate fields)

What I want to do is pluck out tables of individual towns.

The tool the bosses have given me is Excel and while I'm fairly handy at using spreadsheets for numerical data, my go-to on a project like this would be a simple database. (I could kill this project with Appleworks.)

Can I create a new table in Excel consisting of the entries (rows) that contain SOMETOWN in one column?

Thanks in advance.

mt

 

[exegete77]

Take a look at this thread on MrExcel.Com.

 

[GGJstudios]

You can use the Data > Text to Columns function to split the addresses into separate columns for address, city, state, zip.

 

[mysterytramp]

You can use the Data > Text to Columns function to split the addresses into separate columns for address, city, state, zip.

This comes awful close, except the data are inconsistent. In some the town is in column I, in some column J.

Still, better than when I started.

mt

 

[GGJstudios]

This comes awful close, except the data are inconsistent. In some the town is in column I, in some column J.

Still, better than when I started.

mt

That happens when the address format is inconsistent, such as:
123 Main St., Anywhere, ST 12345
123 Main St., Suite 250, Anywhere, ST 12345

If you use comma-delimited, you'll end up with "Suite 250" in the same column with city names, and the data after that in the wrong columns. Inevitably, there's some manual clean-up to be done.