Excel is trying to help by remember the last settings you used for
data|Text to columns.

You can fool it by "resetting" your choices.

Find an empty cell
put asdf
in that cell

Data|Text to columns
delimited
uncheck all the options
finish up

And then clean up that cell with asdf in it.

baricks wrote:

I frequently use 'Data / Text to Columns' to split peoples names into
separate columns, one column for given name & one column for surname. If I
then do a copy & paste for other data, every word is placed into a separate
column. The only way I can get it to stop, is to close Excel down and
reopen.
I suspect there is something in my setup that is causing this, but cannot
find where/ what it is.

--

Dave Peterson