How to do this in Excel?

Ironic Namesake · 17 Apr 2009 at 22:44

I have a list of products, and I need to add the manufacturer name into the description cell , I can do this manually ie. double click beginning of name, then paste manufacturer name (will do them one by one) but is there any other way of doing this?

Have around 3000 products to do , and I'll get bored quickly if I do this manually

Thanks in advance

spitzoid · 18 Apr 2009 at 01:57

Post up the whole file somewhere i.e. savefile.com, or perhaps just a screenshot so that we can have a see how it is formatted and advise.

Depending on how many different manufacturers there are I'm guessing that it could either be done with an "IF" function, or a "LEFT"/"RIGHT" function. It might however not even require functions, just find & replace or something else.

Really do need to see all or part of the list.

Cogwork · 18 Apr 2009 at 02:29

How many difference manufacturers are there?
One possibility is to have a second column where you paste the manufacturers name (which can be done in big blocks), and then a third column which uses CONCATENATE to combine them. Then just cut/paste the 3rd column as "value only".

A1=manufacturer
B1=product description
C1=CONCATENATE(A1," ",B1) the "" just adds a space between them

then copy-paste column C to D "as values only"

Ironic Namesake · 18 Apr 2009 at 10:36

That's what the spreadsheet looks like, all those items are from the same manufacturer, they're all in blocks.

Cogwork, thanks I'll try your suggestion

spitzoid · 18 Apr 2009 at 12:07

Yes it will be as Cogwork suggested, concatenate. Didn't really understand what you wanted to do tbh.

Ironic Namesake · 18 Apr 2009 at 12:58

Yup that works perfectly

Excel comes in very useful at times , great piece of kit - find a new function every time I get stuck !

Tomsk · 18 Apr 2009 at 13:17

Cogwork said:
How many difference manufacturers are there?
One possibility is to have a second column where you paste the manufacturers name (which can be done in big blocks), and then a third column which uses CONCATENATE to combine them. Then just cut/paste the 3rd column as "value only".

A1=manufacturer
B1=product description
C1=CONCATENATE(A1," ",B1) the "" just adds a space between them

then copy-paste column C to D "as values only"

The shorthand version would be

=A1 & " " & B1