SPLIT in Google Sheets
SPLIT is a Google Sheets function that breaks text into separate cells at a delimiter. =SPLIT(A2, ",") turns "red,green,blue" into three cells across the row.
Because the results spill to the right, leave empty columns beside the formula. By default SPLIT treats each character in the delimiter separately; set the third argument to FALSE to split on a whole string like " - ". It's a formula-based version of Data → Split text to columns that updates when the source changes.
Syntax
=SPLIT(text, delimiter, [split_by_each], [remove_empty_text])
Example
=SPLIT(A2, " ")
Splits a full name into first and last name columns.
Common mistakes
- Cells to the right aren't empty, causing a #REF! error.
- Multi-character delimiters split on each character unless split_by_each is FALSE.
- Numbers like "007" lose leading zeros once split.
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