> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.cascade.io/cascade/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.cascade.io/cascade/tools/cleaning/text2columns.md).

# Text to Columns

Split one column into many based on text content

Text to columns offers the ability to split one column into many based on characters that appear in that column.

Any column can be split on a number of different characters combinations:

| Option           | Description                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      |
| ---------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Common Delimiter | <p>Split on commonly-used characters:</p><ul><li>Tab</li><li>Comma</li><li>Semicolon</li><li>Space</li><li>Pipe</li></ul>                                                                                                                                        |
| Custom Delimiter | <p>Enter your own <strong>custom delimiter</strong> to split on or</p><p>Enter a <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Regular_Expressions/Cheatsheet"><strong>regex</strong></a> string to identify characters to split on</p> |

You also have the option to identify whether consecutive delimiters should be treated as one, or if your data has enclosing quotes.&#x20;

{% hint style="warning" %}
Note that regex and multi-character custom delimiters cannot be used in conjunction with the option to treat consecutive delimiters as one
{% endhint %}

### Example

Let's say we have a list of email addresses that we want to split into multiple columns:

{% embed url="<https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/5Rt3U/1/>" %}

We want to split on the `.` inside the emails, so we select the **Custom** delimiter and enter `.`. We get the following result:

{% embed url="<https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/VbvRi/2/>" %}

Note that some emails have multiple periods inside them -- the number of resulting columns equals the number of delimiters identified plus one.