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In ‘Numbers’, Is It Possible To Filter Out a Phrase Into One List Of Words?

Hi All,
I’m new to Mac’s numbers spreadsheet; and what I need to do is take a long list of three or four-word phrases that are located in one column, sort every phrase contained on the sheet, so that I end up with one list containing only single words. I’m trying to break the phrases apart into a list of words, and then remove all duplicate words.

I know Excel can do this easily, but after googling this task on using ‘Numbers’, the results show complex formulas only related to what I’m trying to do.

Any guidance or suggested videos would be greatly appreciated..
Thanks-
—–
Dan Goldfedder

Comments: 4 Responses to “In ‘Numbers’, Is It Possible To Filter Out a Phrase Into One List Of Words?”

    7 years ago

    I'm not quite sure what you mean. So you have lines like:
    one two three
    four five six
    seven eight nine
    And you want to convert them so they are like:
    one
    two
    three
    four
    five
    six
    seven
    eight
    nine
    Is that right? I'm thrown by your use of the word "sort." And then your use of the word "filter" too. Neither of which fit the description of what you are describing.

    I would take this list into TextEdit, and replace all the spaces with returns.
    (Find, check "replace", search for a space and replace with Option+Return).
    Then I would copy and paste it back into Numbers.

    But I'm also confused because you say "I know Excel can do this easily" and I'm trying to think about how you would do this in Excel. How would you do it? Maybe if you shared that, I would understand what you are trying to accomplish here.

    As for removing the duplicates, you can use the tutorial I recently posted on that exact subject.

    Dan Goldfedder
    7 years ago

    Hi Gary,

    Thank you for your response. Your example at the beginning is what I'm trying to arrive at.

    In excel, select column containing the data (text, in this case). Then select 'Data', "Text to Columns", "Next". This opens dialogue box where you check off delimiters set to 'tab' and 'space'
    This puts each word into its own column. Then, copy and paste to arrive at one very long column with only one word in each cell.

    Thanks again
    -Dan Goldfedder

    Gale Paeper
    7 years ago

    Dan,

    In Apple's Numbers for Mac Support Communities forum there are several discussions on this topic referencing a "Text to Columns" Automator Service workflow add-on that accomplishes this in Numbers. For one discussion with a still working downlioad link - See "Text to Column Service in Numbers broken?", with the embedded Text to Columns Automator Service Dropbox download link.

    Dan Gol
    7 years ago

    Thank you Gale!

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