How to Split Cells in Google Sheets (2 Steps)

Google Sheets, is the cloud-based version of Google's spreadsheet solution. You can think of it as an easy-to-use, less complicated and most importantly, Free alternative to Microsoft Excel. Google Sheets is a powerful tool for data analysis and manipulation, for the daily tasks.

A common request one might have is, how to split cells in Google Sheets? i.e to split data of one cell into multiple cells, based on a certain criteria.

The easiest way to achieve this is by using the free add-on from Ablebits.com called : Power Tools for Google Sheets (get the add-on for Chrome from here)

STEP ONE

Get the add-on and, go to Add-ons > Power Tools > Split

STEP TWO

Select the cells you want to split, and choose the criteria for splitting. The Power Tools provide a number of available criteria, you’ll find blank space, linked break, coma or any other custom character of your choosing and more. Here's an example of two different criteria:

Split Cells by Space, in the example the cell contains two words separated by space (PIT Designs) we need to split the one cell into two cells, one for each word.

Split Cells by special character, in this case we have one cell contains (PIT Designs - Creative Digital Solutions), we need to split this one cell into two cells, one of them contains PIT Designs the other Creative Digital Solutions, the way to do so is by selecting custom criteria character "-" which separates the words, and here's the result: