rearanging data from duplicates in excel - excel

Question

I have an excel sheet with a list of mothers and students,
Every record shows just one student, but some of the moms have more than one student - meaning they have multiple records.
How do i move the extra students for every mom to another column on the mom's row ?
example:
to this:

Answer 1

Here is a short ruby script that does that (thanks to Yanik Rabe)
(The pluralize method in the beginning is not really necessary, just makes prettier error messages...)
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
# The CSV file to read from
INPUT_FILE = 'sample.csv'
# The CSV file to write to
# This can be the same as INPUT_FILE
# Existing files will be overwritten
OUTPT_FILE = 'sample.out.csv'
# The total number of cells in each row
CELL_COUNT = 10
# The number of cells for each student
# This defines how many columns contain
# student data and will therefore be
# moved to the matching row.
STDT_CELLS = 4
# ----- End of configuration -----
require 'csv'
lines = CSV.read INPUT_FILE
class String
def pluralize(n, plural = nil)
noun = \
if n == 1
dup
elsif plural
plural
else
"#{self}s"
end
"#{n} #{noun}"
end
end
class Array
def real_length
last_index = 0
(0..length).each do |i|
last_index = i if self[i] and not self[i].to_s.empty?
end
last_index + 1
end
end
lines.each_with_index do |line, i|
next unless line
if line.length < CELL_COUNT
missing = CELL_COUNT - line.length
noun = 'missing cell'.pluralize missing
STDERR.puts "Warning: #{noun} on line #{i+1} will be filled with an empty string in the output"
while line.length < CELL_COUNT
line << ''
end
end
# Check for other entries with the same parent email
lines.each_with_index do |dline, di|
next unless dline
next if i == di
next if dline.empty?
if line.first == dline.first
((CELL_COUNT - STDT_CELLS)..(CELL_COUNT - 1)).each do |i|
line[line.real_length] = dline[i]
end
lines[di] = nil
end
end
end
CSV.open OUTPT_FILE, 'wb' do |csv|
lines.each do |line|
csv << line if line
end
end
puts "Read #{INPUT_FILE} (#{lines.length} lines), wrote #{OUTPT_FILE} (#{lines.compact.length} lines). Have a nice day!"