A long shot, but I'll ask anyway...

[wb]

Most days, I have quite a lot of system bets including plenty of lays.

After the days racing is over, I download my betfair results into the spreadsheet.

However, the records betfair give are pretty basic, and I have to add the other variables that I like to record myself.

In the main columns headed 'market' ........ the betfair spreadsheet will give something like:

GB / Ling 6th Jun / 16:20 1m2f Hcap



Basically, betfair clump the country, track, date, time, distance and race type into one cell - which is impossible for filtering when reviewing my bets!

As you can see in my example spreadsheet, I copy and paste the betfair details in Column A. I then manually separate the details and type them into Comumn B,C & D etc.

Is there any way that the spreadsheet will somehow 'recognise' the information in Column A, and separate it for me?
I know it's a long shot, but it's worth asking as it would save me a hell of a lot of time.

[John]

Hi Wayne :)

From what I understand of Excel and having tried something similar once myself, yes there is! But not in exactly the way you have demonstrated in your spreadsheet.

In your example, make a duplicate of the cells A3-A12 below your current block.

Then highlight these cells and go to DATA -> TEXT TO COLUMNS.

Then choose DELIMITED.

Type in the forward slash ( / ) to separate your data in the "Other" box. You can separate it out further if you wish, by ticking the "Spaces" box too.

This separates the data in a fashion similar to the way you've done yours but not exactly. There may be a way in which you can extract the data out of Excel and read it back in... or maybe some kind of VB Script you can use to parse the data how you want it displaying.

Hope this helps a little!

[wb]

:splapme

Unfortunately, I'm using Open Office, and the TEXT TO COLUMNS option does not seem to be available :(

I really need to get my hands on excel.

[GlosRFC]

What kind of text functions do you have in Open Office? Excel gives options like FIND and SEARCH...you can also use MID, LEFT and RIGHT to strip out characters and break text fields apart. Just a case of understanding how to use the functions.

[Win2Win]

OpenOffice 2 is not that much dissimilar to how Excel functions, the majority of Macros work apart from those that use any MS program functions, such as calling directly from MS Word.

Most functions are replicated, you just need to find them :)

[wb]

Thanks everyone, I may be getting my hands on excel but I'll have a look at OO later.