Upon re-reading:

parsed to different columns depending on its format.

If Text To Columns isn't what you want, I think you'll need to explain the
format criteria a little further (and maybe post a small sample of actual
data).

"JMB" wrote:

One play that might work. Select your data in column A. Make sure the
columns to the right are empty. Click Data/Text To Columns. Select
Delimited. Under the delimiter section check "other" and put in *
(unchecking other boxes). Click finish. Since we did not check "Treat
Consecutive Delimiters As One" Excel will leave empty columns between your
data, so you could put the "**" back in these columns and copy down. If you
don't need "**", then just check the "Treat Consecutive Delimiters as One"
when you go through the Text To Columns process.


" wrote:

Hi, I copied and pasted plain text from a source and need to parse the
columns. The problem is that the data (all in column A) needs to be
parsed to different columns depending on its format. Example:

Col A
AAAAA ** bbbbb ** Ccccc
Ddddd ** eeee

Needs to be this:
Col A Col B Col C Col D Col E
AAAAA ** bbbbb ** Ccccc
Ddddd ** eeee

I was thinking using an if statement would work, i.e. if there are four
"*" then ..., else... but I can't get anything to work. Please let me
know if you have any other suggestion, or possible solutions. Oh, and
this text cannot be opened as a file in Excel, it must be copied and
pasted.