Chapter 11. Text Functions: Letters as data
Excel loves your numbers, but it can also handle your text.
It contains a suite of functions designed to enable you to manipulate text data. There are many applications to these functions, but one that all data people must deal with is what to do with messy data. A lot of times, you’ll receive data that isn’t at all in the format you need it to be in—it might come out of a strange database, for example. Text functions shine at letting you pull elements out of messy data so that you can make analytic use of it, as you’re about to find out....
Your database of analytic customers just crashed!
Lightning smashed into your office and wiped out all your hard drives, including your customer database. No problem. Just go get the backup disks, right?
Wrong. The guy in charge of backups forgot to do them (he sends his apologies). Fortunately, you have something you might be able to use. Word is, a garbled scrap of email sent a few days ago might have salvageable information about your contacts....
Here’s the data
That email has your client list, all right, but the list isn’t looking so hot. All the data is mashed together. One of your employees loaded it and saved it to an Excel file for you....
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