The VB I know is not all that limited at all. Just out of curiosity, which
version of VBA are you using?

Rick


"Frank Pytel" wrote in message
...
Bob;

Sounds easy enough. I would certainly like to see code to this affect. The
VB that I know is limited, but it sounds intriguing. I am not sure at all
that I see this working.

Can you point me to some of the code for the hyphen portion and for
deleting
commas.

Thanks Bob. Have a Great Day.

Frank Pytel

"Bob Bridges" wrote:

It absolutely can be done in VB; in fact I would say, theoretically, that
any
full programming language can do it, even if some can do it more easily
than
others. This one would be easier to do in other languages, but it
wouldn't
be really easy in any language - possibly excepting REXX, and maybe LISP
if I
knew LISP - and if Excel is where the data is stored then it's probably
the
right place to process it.

Let's see, now. There may be a more elegant way to do it, but I think
each
string in column B can be parsed as follows:

1) Change every string of consecutive <spaces to a single <space.
2) Next change every occurrence of <space<hyphen and <hyphen<space to
a
single <hyphen.
3) Next change every occurrence of <comma, <space<comma and
<comma<space to a single <space.

Now you have a string consisting simply of "<i <j-<k <l" etc. You
can
take each space-delimited group in turn. Each one that has a hyphen in
it
can be divided and then turned into a list of numbers <j through <k,
and
each group without a hyphen is number by itself. Each number thus
generated
must be concatenated to the value in column A and written to a new cell
in
your resulting list.

As I said, this isn't exactly elegant, but it's more easily described
than
some of the solutions that would run faster. How much detail do you want
to
get into?

--- "Frank Pytel" wrote:
I am trying to help someone, for which I am not sure there exists a
solution. He
has a .csv file that he is opening in Excel. The values, somehow,
import into the
correct conglomeration of data. More in a minute.

Column A is a number formatted as text. Column B is a series of
numbers, some
formatted as text. Those that are not formatted as text, are separated
by
commas (Huh!!) and hyphens.

The object is to concatenate the two values together. Example:

A | B | C
| |
1 | 357 |Argentina
| |
345 |32,34,39 |Paraguay
| 40-45 |
| |
33945 |27-30,41, | USA
|43, 45 |

The data should finally look like this for USA (etc.)

A | B
3394527 |USA
3394528 |USA
3394529 |USA
3394530 |USA
3394541 |USA
3394543 |USA
3394545 |USA

Which column the new values end up in does not matter. I know how to do
this
fairly rapidly with formula's and a big enough worksheet. Then copy and
paste
the values to where I want them.

I am wondering if this is even possible. I am not a big VB fan. I like
to
avoid them if I can, but I wonder if this can even be handeled by VB.
Column
B on one of the cells looks like this as an example.

264235, 264469, 264476, 264497, 264536-264539, 264543, 264581-264584,
264724, 264729, 264772-264773

There is no regularity to the number of digits. There is no regularity
to
the hyphenation location. There is no regularity to the format of the
numbers
(which I guess all could be changed to numbers and back to text for
concantenation) and there is no regularity to the quantity of values in
the
cell.

Is there any hope for this? Any help would be appreciated.

PS. I see a lot of posts here that look really nice. I am on the Office
Online site. I know these posts can be viewed and edited at other
sites. Can
I set this up in Outlook so that I can Post and search. Kind of like
Outlook
Express? Thanks