Automatically convert fixed length strings into delimited strings - excel

Question

I have many files containing such lines :
HUIHOJ OPKKA LK
ASOIJS AISJJ PL
AOSKSI ASIJD YA
I want to convert theses lines into something like this :
HUI;HOJ ;OPKKA ;L;K
ASO;IJS ;AISJJ ;P;L
AOS;KSI ;ASIJD ;Y;A
So the first field would be 3 characters, second would be 4, third 6, fourth 1 and fifth 1 character.
I know that it's possible to do it manually with excel, but I need to have automatically conversion solution, because I have many files with exactly the same structure.

Answer 1

VBA has a simple command to format text, so you can do this fairly easily, and with just a single line of code
Function SpFmt(S As String) As String
SpFmt = Format(S, "###\;####\;######\;#\;#")
End Function
If you want to use a worksheet function, you can do this with a nested replace formula on the worksheet:
=REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(A1,4,0,";"),9,0,";"),16,0,";"),18,0,";")

Answer 2

Use the VBA Join Function after splitting (Split function) on a space or simply replace (Replace functoin) all of the spaces with a space & semi-colon.
dim str as string
str = range("A1").value2 'HUIHOJ OPKKA LK
range("A1") = Join(Split(str, char(32)), chr(32) & chr(59)) 'HUIHOJ ;OPKKA ;LK
str = range("A1").value2 'HUIHOJ OPKKA LK
range("A1") = Replace(str, chr(32), chr(32) & chr(59)) 'HUIHOJ ;OPKKA ;LK

Answer 3

If you are not bounded to Excel, you can use unix tools (also available for Windows) to do this very efficiently with just one command:
cut --output-delimiter=";" -c 1-3,4-7,8-13,14,15 fixed.txt > delimited.csv
The same command in a loop:
for f in *.txt ; do
cut --output-delimiter=";" -c 1-3,4-7,8-13,14,15 "${f}" > "${f}.csv"
done
Edit : the output delimiter option does not seem to work on every platform.
Alternatively, you can use sed :
sed "s/^\(.\{3\}\)\(.\{4\}\)\(.\{6\}\)\(.\)\(.\)/\1;\2;\3;\4;\5/" fixed.txt > delimited.csv