Suppose your company has sales throughout the United States, and all sales have an order number that lists the two digit code for the state, a hyphen, and the order #. (i.e. FL-1234). If you want to isolate the state in order to prepare a sales analysis on a state by state level, you can: Split the field by clicking the drop down, select "custom split", and then split on the hyphen, keeping the first column Split the field by clicking the drop down, select "split data"; it will know to split at the hyphen o Copy the field by clicking the drop down menu, select "copy" to create a copy of this column into a second column, and then edit the data of each field to delete the order numbers Custom group the data, by clicking the drop down and selecting "custom groups" and then defining the groups of state and order #