We all know that Pivot Tables are best thing since avocado on toast. But they can’t slice text values and spread them in a table with Pivots. So how to take a large blob of text and turn it in to something meaningful like below?
Simple, we use Power Query.
How to pivot text values – Tutorial
- Let’s say your large chunk of meaty data is in a table named text
- Select any cell in your table and go to Data > From Table (or Power Query > From Table)
- Once your data is in PQ, split it by : (right click on the column and choose split column by > Delimiter)
- Now, your data will become 2 columns. First column with FUNxxx reference and next column with rest of the text.
- Go to second column and remove nulls (Filter > uncheck nulls)
- Now replace all punctuation in second column using replace values
- Replace ( ) , with spaces
- Now split column 2 by delimiter = space. But this time, split in to rows (using advanced option as shown below)
- Filter the rows on second column so you only have anything that begins with FUN or REQ
- Select both columns and remove duplicates
- Rename columns and load your data to Excel.
- Done, your text is now pivoted.
Related: Introduction to Power Query
Pivoting Text Values – Video Tutorial
If the Power Query steps seem confusing, watch below quick video tutorial to understand how to pivot text values in Excel. You can also catch this on Chandoo.org YouTube Channel.
Download Text Value Pivot – Example workbook
Click here to download example workbook with the query steps. Go to Pivot tab and right click on the table to either refresh or edit.
Got few more minutes? Check out other awesome ways to use Power Query
If you have just 10 minutes to learn, I suggest spending that on below PQ tips. You will learn powerful new ways to deal with data pains.
- Figuring out Employee Churn with Power Query [HR Analytics]
- Rescue oddly shaped data – Battle between Formulas, VBA and Power Query
- Extract currency amounts from text – Power Query Tutorial
- Unpivot data quickly with Power Query [tutorial]
Got a pesky text extraction / summary problem – post here
If you struggle processing text and want to learn new ways to deal with it, post your problem in comments. I will try to share solutions thru Excel / Power Query.
Alternatively, feel free to suggest your own methods to pivot text values in Excel.
8 Responses to “Top 5 keyboard shortcuts for Excel Charts”
As far as I remember (checked, again, 2 minutes ago) in my "Excel 2013" in order to select various chart elements I need to use the Arrow keys and not the TAB key.
Practically, the TAB key does nothing (within a Chart).
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Michael (Micky) Avidan
Thanks for pointing this out. This is how I remember it too, but when I was recording the video yesterday, only TAB key worked. MS must have changed the keys in Excel 2016. I have edited the post to include both keys.
The key navigation on charts is different in 2016.
TAB cycles through a layer of objects (SHIFT+TAB cycles backwards)
ENTER move down a layer
ESC moves up a layer
So on a column chart with title/legend/data labels if you select the plotarea the TAB will go through Title > Legend > Plotarea.
ENTER at plotarea will then select Vertical axis. Tab will take you through
Horizontal axis > gridlines > Series > Horizontal Axis.
ENTER with series selected will then allow you to TAB through individual data points and data labels.
If you ENTER on datalabels you can TAB through each data label.
ALT + F1 : to create default chart
ALT+E S T = CTRL + ALT + V, T : I find that easier to remember
I second what Michael already said about TAB and arrow keys. I can't help but think if this is related to the "," or ";" as separator. I prefer to use the chart tools - layout- drop down box, anyway.
Got to be F11 for instant charting. Highlight your data , hit F11 and voila! ?
Ctrl+1 is the most important chart shortcut. In fact, it works for any Excel object: whatever is selected, Ctrl+1 opens the task pane or dialog to format that object.
Somewhere along the line, maybe when Excel 2016 came out, the arrow keys stopped working to cycle through the elements of a chart. But what works is holding Ctrl while clicking the arrow keys. I haven't gotten used to the Tab and other keys, but as long as Ctrl+Arrow works, I'm good.
And F4 used to be so helpful when formatting a lot of charts. But since Excel 2007 came out, it has been mostly useless. It used to remember a whole set of changes at once, so I get that the newer modeless dialogs make that impractical. But now it only seems to work with formatting of lines and borders, and maybe fills. I find myself writing a lot of VBA one-liners in the Immediate Window to handle these tedious formatting tasks.
after clicking on a chart, is there a shortcut key to copy it?
Thank you for the Alt E S T - tip. This is more than a time saver. Because of dynamic charts or de-activated external references to data when you make the charts, you often have empty charts that are otherwise impossible to format. So this shortcut helps adressing that. I will work with it more and see if there remain some obstacles.