import address from single cell

[24thhour]

i've got a problem.. i've got a database of about 200 addresses inside
excel, all on one column.. i'm trying to import them into entourage or
apple address book but can't figure out a creative way to separate out
each of the different items, street number, street name, city, zip
code, etc.. i tried doing the "text to columns" method but it won't do
because some address have more than the usual spaces.. per se, an
address with 31 New York St. will have different columns as 31 NewYork
St. since it's 2 words vs. 1 word.. i know this is a long shot but
anyone have any creative ideas?

thanks!

 

[CyberTaz]

You're facing a nightmare of a task because of the variable way the data is
glommed together... But that isn't anything you don't already know, is it?

Fortunately you're only dealing with a small number of records, but it would
be more time & trouble to develop & test a procedure to handle it -
especially if you don't expect to need it again. IMHO, your best bet is to
edit the records - one by one - to put commas in separating the would-be
fields of data, then use the Text to Columns feature>Delimited & specify the
comma as the break character rather than the default space (hopefully there
are no commas in the 'wrong' places already). If you think there are commas
where they would be a problem you can use a different character. Also, if
there are occurrences of multiple spaces in the records you can use Find &
Replace. In fact, that would expedite marking the intended column breaks
(replacing space with ; for example) - you just need to evaluate each
replacement rather than using Replace All.

A bit time-consuming, but be glad there aren't 2,000 or 20,000 records
rather than 200!

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac