Text to Columns tool - Bug/Oversight/or as intended?

Question

Hi

So i have been using the text to columns tool to parse out a string with a delimiter of 3 characters in the following sequence -^-

However the tool only takes the first - as the delimiter.

I created a workaround using the regex replace tool, but rather curious as to why this didn't work in the first place.

Settingsresult

DataBlender · Accepted Answer

Hi @GavinAttard

The tool only accepts single-character delimiters so the results are 'as intended'.

Using regex is often the workaround I have seen suggested on this forum to those who wish to split on a non-singular character.

Edit: A quick search (link) highlighted that you can apparently specify a list of delimiters in the text to columns configuration and it will split the field on the occurrence of any one of them as a singular occurrence. However, it doesn't look like that was the case for you since the number of columns was set to 2.