Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with columns

How can I separate this data column properly?

iamkimiam — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 08:30:24 -0800

Question about splitting data into columns: I have one column of data that I'd like to split into seven separate columns. A typical, complete row in the column looks like "mefi:1,ask:3,meta:2,projects:5,jobs:5,music:6,irl:4" where the number values can be anywhere from 1-6. The problem is that if any one or more of the seven subsites are left unanswered, the entire value is missing (there is no "[subsite]:0" or "," as a placeholder). Consequently, separating the column into seven distinct columns using the comma as the separator causes the data to fall/shift into the wrong output columns if any one or more of the seven subsite categories are missing. How can i fix this? I am using Google Refine, which is great and can handle regexes. I would prefer NOT to put this into Excel, as I will lose my encoding of special characters in the other columns if I save it out...I'd like to not break up and re-merge the data/columns if at all possible. I also have SQL at my disposal (and am quite familiar with its features; although writing queries from scratch is a bear).

tl;dr: how can insert commas into rows of data in places where a value is expected but not found? Willing to use or tinker with any regex or script that will do the job, but need a starting point at the very least.

Any other ways of tackling this problem would be great. This is 2,000 rows of data, btw.

Do columnists write their own columns?

Jagz-Mario — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:07:38 -0800

Do columnists write their own columns?

Match multiple columns in excel/access

thankyoumuchly — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 12:41:31 -0800

I'm trying to merge multiple month's worth of data into one master spreadsheet with a master column on the left, and individual month's counts on the right. My data is laid out as such: Current State: http://i.imgur.com/mR9PO.png

Desired State: http://i.imgur.com/k16ln.png

As you can see I'm going from the "fruit" columns being spread out across multiple columns, to having one master "fruit" column on the left, and individual monthly count columns on the right.

Can I do this easily in excel and/or access?

Oh, Loathe is too nice a word...

rich — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 15:44:22 -0800

How can I use a column in an excel sheet to automatically become the comments for a corresponding column? Imagine two columns.. one is a word, the second is a definition. I'd like to mouse-over the word in the Excel sheet and the description pop up a la the little red indicator that you have a comment. I don't want to have to go into each individual cell, open up the comment window, delete the auto-text filled in, and then type in my definition. Especially since that definition is in the column next to the word already.

Using Table data to automatically (re)name worksheets in Excel 2007?

Lentrohamsanin — Tue, 10 May 2011 14:19:39 -0800

In Excel 2007 can I use data in a column on one spreadsheet to automatically change the name of another spreadsheet in the same workbook? Say I have a workbook with 11 sheets. The first sheet in the workbook is called "Key". It has two columns labeled "Numbers" and "Letters". "Numbers" has the numbers from 1 to 10 sequentially in its first ten rows, and "Letters" has the corresponding letter of the alphabet (A-J). The remaining ten sheets in the workbook are labeled "1" to "10". Is there an automated way to change them to the corresponding letter value using the data in the first worksheet?

How can I reformat some rows into columns in Excel?

teg — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 08:16:04 -0800

How can I reformat some rows into columns in Excel? Here's a sample of the kind of data I have:

ClientID  Date    Amount

123       Jan-1   $5.00

123       Jan-15  $6.00

123       Feb-1   $4.00

456       Jan-1   $7.00

456       Feb-1   $3.00

And I want to reformat it to:

ClientID  Jan-1  Jan-15  Feb-1

123       $5.00  $6.00   $4.00

456       $7.00  [NULL]  $3.00

I'm running Excel 2007. If it matters: there are only 7 different possible dates, but the number of clients is large. There won't be more than one record for any client-date combo. Also, this data is coming out of an Access database, so if there's an easier way to do this in a report in Access, I can do that instead.

What is the technical term for these Pompeiian columns?

manos_frias — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:30:54 -0800

Can anyone tell me what the architectural or sculptural term is for these low, narrow columns with busts of deities or heroes on the tops of them? (Or tell me a good source for finding such a term when you have a picture, like this one, which was taken in Pompeii?)

Excel column matching

tseo — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:26:09 -0800

How to remove content from table that is not in other column I have one table with two columns (one is name of product, other is quantity)
I need to remove from this table all the products that are not into another column that I have. The problem is that the column with the products (the one in the table) has some IDs after the names of the products and column 2 (this is the column with products that we want to stay in the first column and the rest to be deleted) is just product names. After the product name there is space and apart from the IDs the rest of the names are perfectly identical.

Can someone give me an advice?

Thanks very much

Help me fix my wordpress theme for internet explorer? (YAML)

yuletide — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:48:30 -0800

Web design panic! Wordpress theme (YAML + sandbox) implodes on impact with internet explorer So, I made a swell website. Was all clever and used Yet Another Multicolumn Layout as a CSS/XHTML framework, smashed together with the classic sandbox theme framework for wordpress.

Great success! Until I tested it in internet explorer

I've tried perusing the various CSS bug fixes/diagnoses, even within the YAML documentation. But at this point I'm ready to throw things through windows (the glass kind). So I thought I'd try asking for help.

Site is here. Rather than posting all my source files, I think it best to let people poke around using Firebug so they can see it all in action.

Basic idea is: header, then two 50% columns with the main content. Right column then has two more 50% columns after its main content box. All of the columns go screwy in IE. And something's up with the header image too. YAML has some built-in functionality for dealing with IE bugs, but it also has two different ways of doing columns (default method, but then also subtemplates, which I've worked in as well (clearly not successfully)) not sure how to work it in, or if I've already hopelessly messed things up with my own tweaks.

Stylesheets:
YAML base stylesheet
Base content styles (somewhat modified, but not much/any layout stuff)
**The rest (including the layout styles)**

I can post more details, etc if needed...

Valid solution to the CSS equal height columns problem?

dolca — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:23:19 -0800

Is this a good way to solve the equal height columns problem in CSS? I was trying to solve the problem of how to get background colours to fill the full column heights in a three-column layout, as the shorter columns only extend far enough to cover their contents and so don't line up. Being a relative beginner at all this, I looked both in my web-design book and on the internet for how to go about it - and most advice seemed to be either for the faux-columns way, using repeated images, or the huge padding/negative margin overflow way, neither of which seemed ideal. Or other hacks of similar complexity.

But then I thought of using two extra divs - one around the left and central columns, with the central column's own background-color set and the left column relying on the background-color of the extra div to show through its transparency, becoming its background. The containing div naturally extends to the height of the longest column, and so too does the background colour. Same with the larger div, taking care of the background colour of the right column. (brief outline of the HTML structure at Pastebin here)

And with all the divs floated to the left (except possibly the centrecolumn floated to the right), that seems to have solved the problem. But while there have been many solutions suggested on the internet, I don't seem to see this one around - it seems to work really well with most browsers (although it took a little more work with IE6), and I got it to work for the website I'm building in both fixed and liquid layouts. (I used the #wrapper as the #rightcolumnbackground there, which meant I really only had to add one div.)

Are there cons to this I'm not seeing? Or are the book and all the articles I read on this just out of date? What's the easiest way to solve the problem right now?

Column limits suck

ROU_Xenophobe — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:02:29 -0800

Editor for very large flat files? I'm assembling a large flatfile dataset to feed into another program*. Assembling it is almost entirely just a matter of pasting together existing matrices in a sort of checkerboard pattern and marking the rest of the cells as missing.

When it's done, the file will be approximately 7500 rows by 42000 columns. I'll be using csv as an intermediate format. Editing in a spreadsheet (or something identical to me as a user) would be the most convenient.

But Excel 2007 tops out at 16K columns. Is there anything out there that can open and edit a file like that? Ideally cheap or free as always.

I do know some workarounds:

(1) Transpose the matrix so it will fit in Excel 07, and re-transpose the final product in R or something else.

(2) Cobble it together out of multiple files/sheets and then paste it all back together in a text editor or with perl.

But in both of those cases, I'm left with a "final" csv that I can't open in anything to check that everything went okay.

*Estimating legislators' ideal points in a common ideological space.

Tabs, pseudo-columns, and wrapping lines

largecorp — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:11:31 -0800

Name. Tab. Phone number. This creates two columns. One for name and one for phone number, except--when someone has a really long name that goes past the tab setting and impinges on the phone number area. Is there some sort of tab setting that will make that long name wrap around, creating a second line within its own name area? For the record, I know I could use a table to do exactly this, but I'm reformatting a huge amount of text that is already laid out with tabs. Any advice for this poor sap who accepted the job? The text is in an InDesign document, but I can copy it to a word processor or anything that would do the trick. Thanks!

Where to Buy Inexpensive Wood Columns?

mincus — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 08:48:35 -0800

My wife and I are looking to make our entertainment room look somewhat like an Opera house. Any ideas for procuring inexpensive-columns? The prices for new columns (along with the base and capital) made from wood or plastic seem to start at around $500 (and then go much much higher). This seems really high something relatively simple.

The columns won't be load bearing, they are merely for decoration. We've also done some antique store hunting to see if they had some old beat up columns, but no luck so far.

So do any green reading column experts have any ideas? Thanks!

How can I get Keynote to print slides in multiple columns?

4ster — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 12:00:26 -0800

How can I get Keynote '08 to print slides in more than one column? When I am printing, I have an option to print as a handout with an option of 2, 3, 4, 5, or six slides per page. However, Keynote only prints them in one column, with the size of the slide dependent upon the number of slides on the page.

What I am trying to do is print about 9 slides per page (3 rows x 3 columns) and have the slides themselves readable when printed in this configuration. Can this be done?

Columns vertically uneven in Indesign

deadcowdan — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 11:19:37 -0800

Typographers of the world, help me! How does one get lines of type to line up precisely in a two-column format? I've begun using Adobe Indesign, and have run into a problem that I can find little to no information on fixing. In my document, I have two columns of text per page, and the text autoflows from column to column to column. Sprinkled throughout the text are titles or headings. However, as you can see from the examples below, a title or heading appearing in a column will make the text below it vertically misaligned with the column next to it.

Good alignment (no headings)
Misalignment after a heading

What is the best way to tackle this problem so that text in the two columns is always aligned properly, without me having to go through and fix each instance through trial and error? This document is quite long, and I am making changes along the way, so fixing each place it happens is not really practical. What combination of leading and space-before- and space-after-paragraph numbers (or other settings I don't know about) will defeat this?

Making two columns work in MS Word shouldn't be this hard.

midatlanticwanderer — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 12:39:53 -0800

In Microsoft Word 2003, I'm trying to format a document so that there is both one-columned and two-columned text on the same page. Whenever I apply two columns to the text I want to be in two columns, it always shunts all that text to a new page, as if I had inserted a page break. What do to? When I click "Show/Hide" it says I've inserted a continuous section break. All the help files and everything I've consulted say that inserting a continuous section break should allow my text to flow nicely from one column to two all on the same page. However, when I actually do this, it never works and I always have the text in one column on the first page, with a lot of empty white space before the second page where the two columns start. I've talked to others who have had this problem so I know I must not be the only one! Any assistance is much appreciated!

Please help me move from tables to divs in a clear way?

Kickstart70 — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 14:17:27 -0800

How do I do multiple sets of multi-column divs w/ CSS inside other multi-column divs? More details in first comment. This issue has bugged me for a while, and I've usually resorted to table to get away from CSS columnar hideousness

Here's a graphic depiction of what I want to accomplish.

I've managed to make A, B, C, and the unlabelled footer happen with directions I've found using float (left and right, and clearing for the footer), but when I try to use the similar structure for D-H, it fails horribly.

What I eventually want to accomplish is that d-h could be a large (and not previously defined) number of entries, so any solution should take that into account.

Thanks!

Excel: moving data from multiple columns to a 2-column format

blag — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 05:00:24 -0800

Excel / VBA help needed: moving data from multiple columns to a 2-column format I've got an Excel worksheet which contains data in the following format:



Foo  1  3  7

Bar  3  5

Yay  1  5  11  17

And I need it in this format:



Foo  1

Foo  3

Foo  7

Bar  3

Bar  5

Yay  1

Yay  5

Yay  11

Yay  17

...where the contents of columns B:ZZ are moved to B1:B999 and the relevant title from column A is listed alongside each item. It's complicated by the fact that each title has a variable number of entries alongside it: some have as many as 30, some have none.

I know the 'transpose' command will convert the rows to columns but it's still not what I'm after. It may be the first step, though.

Is there an easy way to do this automagically or is it a VB task? If so, any VB geniuses out there?

Thanks

I just wanna hide!

phoenixc — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 12:57:00 -0800

I have an Excel worksheet populated with data from columns A through IS. I’d like to hide columns but I am getting the following error: “Cannot shift objects off sheet.” Why? The worksheet has tables of monthly data with summary columns providing the annual total and variances for about 10 years. I’d like to hide the monthly columns and show just the annual total for the first 4 years in my worksheet and am able to do so for the first 2 years (data from columns A-AH). But when I try to hide the data for anything beyond column AG, I get the error message, “Cannot shift objects off sheet.” I can’t even minimize the column width as a work-around—I get the same error message.

I tried closing the file and opening it again. I tried clearing all the data from the cells in the columns that appear empty to me at the end of my worksheet. Same message.

Why does Excel think I want to shift objects off the sheet? I just want to hide columns—the objects would still theoretically be on the sheet, non?

Is there a glaringly easy fix to my problem that I just can’t think of because staring at these columns and numbers for so long has addled my brain? Please help.

How to correctly export columnar labels from Word into Excel?

empyrean — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 21:23:15 -0800

A friend has a large list of address labels in column format which were created in Excel, then exported to Word. He no longer has the original Excel file. Now he needs the Word address labels exported back into Excel, maintaining the format structure of each cell containing a person's Name and Address.

Is this possible? How?

Reverse column order in Excel?

rexruff — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 17:02:55 -0800

Using MS Excel 2002 (Win), my mom has managed to reverse the order of the columns at the top of the page (Z to A instead of the usual). _Not_ the actual cell entries, but the columns themselves appear in reverse order. She has no idea how/when she did it. It's only new files that appear this way, not her old files, so I'm assuming she has somehow changed a default setting. Searching the Help options and three Excel forums has brought me nothing. Anybody?

Thanks,
s.

Blue steel columns - what's up with that?

tomharpel — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 16:42:09 -0800

Occassionally found on the sidewalks of Seattle, and probably other cities, steel blue columns stand about three feet tall, bolted down to the concrete. About seven inches in diameter, they are topped with a cap one foot tall with a door in the side. A padlock keeps the door shut. What are these things? My Flickr buddy Tonx says, "In NYC there were similar thingamajigs that belonged to the phone company where periodically they would plug a big tank of coolant into it - possibly liquid nitrogen." Any corroboration? What is the phone company doing with the liquid nitrogen?