You can use the following formula in Excel to split a word into cells with individual letters:
=MID($A2, COLUMNS($A$2:A$2), 1)
This particular formula splits the word in cell A2 into separate cells that contain the individual letters of the word.
The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.
Example: Split Word into Individual Letters in Excel
Suppose we have the following list of basketball team names in Excel:
We can type the following formula into cell B2 to split the first team names into individual letters:
=MID($A2, COLUMNS($A$2:A$2), 1)
We can then click and drag this formula to the right until each letter has been accounted for:
We can then click and drag the formula down to the remaining rows to split each team name into individual letters:
Each team name in column A has now been split out into individual letters.
How This Formula Works
Recall the formula we used to split a word into individual letters:
=MID($A2, COLUMNS($A$2:A$2), 1)
Here is how this formula works:
The COLUMNS function is used to count the number of columns in a particular range.
The MID function is used to extract a specific number of characters from a starting position in a string.
Thus, this formula extracts only the first character in column B and then only the second character in column C and then only the third character in column D and so on.
The end result is that each word is split into individual letters.
Additional Resources
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Excel:
Excel: How to Count If Cells Contain Text
Excel: How to Use COUNTIF with Multiple Ranges
Excel: How to Count Unique Values Based on Multiple Criteria
