How do I convert strings to characters?

September 25, 2009 12:49 PM

How can I break down a long list of strings into individual characters on a Windows box?

I need a strategy ...

What I have:
----Spreadsheet of several hundred Mandarin Sentences from my personal Pimsleur notes.
----Windows & common prog/tools/utilities.

What I need:
----Mandarin sentences broken down into individual Hanzi with no duplicates.


Although the base info is currently in Excel, I can (of course) move it over to Word (or whatever) if there is perhaps a macro that does this.

posted by RavinDave to computers & internet (2 comments total)

You can use the Text-to-Columns tool (look in the Data menu) to split the text. Specify fixed width fields and insert a break line after each character.
posted by limon at 1:02 PM on September 25

Ah! This looks do-able! A bit tedious (I evidently have to repeat it bunches of times, since I have a few long sentences), but I can live with that. And I can zap the duplicates with Conditional Formatting easy enogh. Thanx!!!
posted by RavinDave at 1:10 PM on September 25