This is a test version of Biostars. For the public version, visit https://www.biostars.org.
Split up excel cell into multiple records

Hello, slight problem I am having here with some excel files.

So I have received several excel files which contain records that have cells with multiple entries - column C. This table is generated from the Byonic software for peptide identification. Image below.

enter image description here

And this is what I want. A new record for each entry in modifications cell while retaining the rest of the information. I want a record row entries for each of the modifications.

enter image description here

I have tried splitting the columns by ";" in excel but that adds columns to the right for each entry. I want a new row for each instead. Has anyone been able to solve a problem like this below? It seems like it would be a pretty straight to the point solution.

If this can be done via another language that works too as I can export these as CSVs or what have you. Any help is appreciated. I can not simply do this by hand as one file alone can have as many as 3k+ records.

excel byonic

You can probably do this with R quite easily, here is some material to get you started: some several stackoverflow posts. Export the files as csv (quoting the fields), read them into R, and follow the posts.

Thanks dude! The second solution worked the best for the situation.

This came to my mind right away.

Yeah I have been working with R a bit, just this is a new area to me. Like the meme by the way :)

I think you're better off saving the Excel file as a text tab-delimited file, and then processing it with a language

Dear colleagues, time to reset the counter. I know we all worked really hard to keep R and Python prominent on this forum, but today we're back to square one.

THIS HAS BEEN AN EXCEL FREE FORUM FOR 0 DAYS.

That is why I posted at the bottom of my post if there were better options out there. :)

In a ranking of options, Excel should be at the bottom so however you rank perl, it is better. :)

0 answers

No answers yet.

Log in to answer this question.