Human Resources Reporting News - April 2013

What is CREW?

Excel Tips and Tricks

This month, we would like to share one of our favorite Excel tricks - formatting a list of data into a string.

This formatting trick comes in handy when using the CREW Multiple Employee ID parameter or anytime you have an Excel list of data that you want to convert into a string (such as a list email addresses for an Outlook message etc.)

1. Formatting the data - In this example we have our IDs in column A and we want our final list to include commas in between the IDs. We will build our formula in column C by entering the following =CONCATENATE(A2,",")

  • Change the "A2" value in the example to the starting cell and column you are concatenating.
  • If concatenating for an email list, change the , to ; =CONCATENATE(A2,";")

You can also enter = in C2 and use the Excel Function Assistant (the drop down above columns A and B) to help build the formula as shown in the screen shot below.

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Copy the new formula to the rest of your data by positioning your cursor over the lower right hand corner of C2 until the cursor becomes a bold dark + and then double-click to copy the formula down the length of your data.

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2. Copy and Paste the data - Highlight your data from column C and copy it (Ctrl+C). Paste your data into a new Word document using the Paste Special feature by clicking on the arrow under Paste in the upper left hand corner and selecting, Paste Special and then selecting Unformatted Text.

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3. Convert data into a string - Using the Find and Replace feature in Word enter ^p in the "Find what:" field and leave the "Replace with:" field blank, click Replace All.

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Your data should look like this:
12345678,87654321,11223344,55667788,99999999,
You can now copy this string into the Multiple ID parameter in CREW and run your report.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the HUIT Helpdesk at 617-496-2001 or via email.

Thank you,
Human Resources Analytics and Reporting

Tag: CREW

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