Numbers - split cells

I have text from pages that is a list. How can I bring that into numbers so that each item is in a different row.

No one seems to know. That would be quite a trick, I think. My approach would be to break it into sections via Copy, and Paste to several cells, then edit.

In other words, Copy 3 items, paste it 3 times, erase items 2 and 3 from the first cell, 1 and 3 from the second, 1 and 2 from the third. Repeat with items 4-6, etc.

Thanks. It works and I may begin to do that. The document is a PDF and has a few hundred lines. It would be easier then typing the list again. I just can't believe that numbers or even Pages has no way to parse data. Word and Excel do.

Or you can edit the document, add commas and import it as a comma-delimited text file. Where a comma appears it will use a new cell. You will need to change the extent of the file with commas to .csv so that Numbers sees it as a comma-delimited file.

bjpup said:

Thanks. It works and I may begin to do that. The document is a PDF and has a few hundred lines. It would be easier then typing the list again. I just can't believe that numbers or even Pages has no way to parse data. Word and Excel do.

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Did you try Jake's method? How did it go?

I would be interested in knowing how one does this with Word and Excel if you have the inclination to share that information.

I would be interested in knowing how one does this with Word and Excel if you have the inclination to share that information.

Click to expand...

I don't use Excel but Word has the ability to parse data from a number of applications via the services menu. I use that ability quite a bit and it works well. However, the application which provides the data has to likewise cooperate thru the services menu. Not every application has that ability.

If you've created a table in Word, it transports to Excel cell for cell. Text, whether from Word or a text file, still has to be delimited, but Excel can import files delimited with commas, tabs, semicolons, spaces or any other character you choose. What I've done that works reasonably well is to do a global find/replace to put in some really unusual character right after every ". " (That's a period followed by a space) and then use that as a delimiter. Now each sentence gets its own cell.