Excel separating data into different columns - vba

Question

I have an Excel workbook I imported with 24,000 business names and addresses. I can't figure out how to separate them into different cells because no commas exist and the some businesses have multiple spaces in the name. Here is an example of what is in each column. Each line is in a separate row.
P & S DELI GROCERY 730 COLUMBUS AVENUE New York NY 10025
ANGELIKA FILM CENTER 18 WEST HOUSTON STREET New York NY 10012
SHASHEMENE INT'L RESTAURA 195 EAST 56 STREET New York NY 11203
CARVEL ICE CREAM 1006 EAST 233 STREET New York NY 10466
LEXLER DELI 405 LEXINGTON AVENUE New York NY 10174
SNACK TIME GRILL 87-69 LEFFERTS BOULEVARD New York NY 11418
MITCHEL LONDON FOODS 22 EAST 65 STREET New York NY 10065
SPOON BREAD CATERING 364 WEST 110 STREET New York NY 10025
TERMINAL CAFE/YANKEE CLIPPER 0 GUARDIA AIRPORT PARKING New York NY 11371
PLAZA BAGELS & DELI 73 NEW DORP PLAZA New York NY 10306
B & M HOT BAGEL & GROCERY 203 GIFFORDS LANE New York NY 10308
TEXAS ROTISSERIE 94 FULTON STREET New York NY 10038

Answer 1

One easy way to get going is to use the `Text to Columns function under the Data tab.
Highlight your cells that you want to split up, and click "Text to Columns". Choose a Delimiter, click "Next", then choose "Space".
Now, it'll take a word, put it in a cell, then take the next word (after a space), and put it in the cell next to that, etc.
The problem I forsee is this isn't going to be a one shot solution. As you mention, the restaurant names can be one word, of up to infinity words. Unless you see some logic in how it's spread out, I think this is your best bet.
For instance, is it safe to assume that if we are reading from left to right, and come across a number, that number starts the address and all preceding text is the restaurant name? ...I doubt it actually, what if my restaurant is called "Bruce's 21 Jump Street Eatery"? As #Johankr points out, this is probably more rare, but you should be aware of this possibility if you're just going to run the macro, save and close (without any human review). You could get a list of major cities, zip codes, etc. and use that to help parse through though and determine where the address starts/ends.

Answer 2

Copy it an paste into Google Spreadsheet and then use regular expressions (REGEXEXTRACT).
So for example to extract everything before the number use:
=REGEXEXTRACT(A1, "(\D*)\d")
It will extract P & S DELI GROCERY. Then to get the number use:
=REGEXEXTRACT(A1, "\D+(\d+)\D*")
It will get you 730. And so on...

Answer 3

This vba Should work for most of what you want:
Sub splitaddress()
Dim ws As Worksheet
Dim rng As Range
Dim oArr() As Variant
Dim lastrow As Long
Dim spltstr() As String
Dim i As Long
Dim j As Long
Dim h As Boolean
Set ws = Sheets("Sheet1")'Change to your sheet name.
lastrow = ws.Range("A" & ws.Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Row
ReDim oArr(1 To lastrow, 1 To 5)
j = 1
h = False
For Each rng In ws.Range("A1:A" & lastrow)
spltstr = Split(rng)
For i = LBound(spltstr) To UBound(spltstr)
If i = UBound(spltstr) Then
oArr(j, 5) = spltstr(i)
ElseIf i = UBound(spltstr) - 1 Then
oArr(j, 4) = spltstr(i)
ElseIf Not h And spltstr(i) = UCase(spltstr(i)) And InStr("1234567890", Left(spltstr(i), 1)) = 0 Then
oArr(j, 1) = oArr(j, 1) & spltstr(i) & " "
ElseIf InStr("1234567890", Left(spltstr(i), 1)) > 0 Or (h And spltstr(i) = UCase(spltstr(i))) Then
h = True
oArr(j, 2) = oArr(j, 2) & spltstr(i) & " "
ElseIf spltstr(i) <> UCase(spltstr(i)) Then
oArr(j, 3) = oArr(j, 3) & spltstr(i) & " "
End If
Next i
oArr(j, 1) = Trim(oArr(j, 1))
oArr(j, 2) = Trim(oArr(j, 2))
oArr(j, 3) = Trim(oArr(j, 3))
h = False
j = j + 1
Next rng
ws.Range("B1").Resize(lastrow, 5).Value = oArr
End Sub
If the street address does not start with a number it will not work.

Answer 4

If all the contacts only exists as a string, i.e. all data in the same cell, no solution is likely to be able to be able to split all contacts properly.
Here are some starting points though, all based on the assumption that the rest of the data looks fairly similar at least.
Very few business are likely to contain numbers in the names, so you can probably safely split address using the first occurance of a number as the divider between name and adress.
Create a lookup table for State and abbreviation. Should be possible to split the adress part of the string into two parts/lines using that.

Answer 5

Assumptions: The City is always = "New York"; the State is always =
"NY".
Place your data in column A starting at row 2.
In columns C thru L, at row 1, type numbers 0 to 9, where each column
gets 1 of the digits (0,1,2 ... 9).
Paste the following into cell C2:
=IF(TYPE(FIND(C$1,$A2,1))=16,LEN($A2),FIND(C$1,$A2,1))
Select and copy cell C2, select range D2:L2 and paste the copied
formula from cell B2.
Paste the following into cell B2: =MIN(C2:L2)
Paste the following into cell M2: =TRIM(MID(A2,1,B2-1))
Paste the following into cell N2: =TRIM(MID(A2,B2,FIND("New York_
NY",A2,1)-1-B2))
Type "New York" in cell O2.
Type "NY" in cell P2.
Paste the following into cell Q2: =RIGHT(A2,5)
Next select copy range B2:Q2 and paste it in rows B3 to end of your
data.