12 replies to this topic

[Vertster]

Okay all you Excel experts. I used to count myself among you, but I officially resign, since I am stumped on this (seemingly) simple question.

I like to use Excel to keep track of keywords for PPC campaigns. Each keyword in its own cell, row. When it comes time to cut and paste them over to Google, I run into a problem. How can I automatically encapsulate all my keywords in quotes? This is for "phrase matching" purposes. Doing it by hand is a major pain in the arse. Is their an easy way to do this?? I have searched high and low, and can't seem to find it, if it exists.

The only thing I can think of would be to create a script that formats the cell using regular expressions to add the quotes on either end of each cell. Of course I am not even sure how to get started doing this in Excel, so I would probably have to take my keyword list and run it through a vbscript application. Arg!

Any ideas?

[joker]

I am by no means an expert at anything, but what about using the concatenate function? surround your kword cell(s) with quote cells, and then use the contatenate function to convert them all into a single string

never tried it for keywords, but it usually does the trick with html and javascript pretty well

[Vertster]

Hmm thats a good idea. I will try it and see if it works!

Thanks!

[Vertster]

Yay! That worked. Good thinking joker! I am thinking there is probably another way to do it, but that will work for now. We'll see if anyone else has any suggestions.

[polarmate]

I am no Excel expert but have you tried exporting it to a csv file with quotes as the text qualifier? The csv file can then be opened in Notepad and you can copy/paste from there. It's still tedious but ...

[Haystack]

I use cocatenate for that, Verster. If you want to get your Excell Expert status back, record a macro to build the formula followed by Fill-Down.

[hypntzd3]

Polarmate,

I agree with you...I use the exporting to CSV tactic as well.

Hypntzd3

[Peter]

Vertster,

Have you tried saving the file as a text file seperating with comma's?

Regards,

Peter

[daniel]

I got one of our developers to throw something together that takes your keywords and creates all the permutations. It is accessed via a web browser.

For example, if you have:

search engine,optimisation

and hit 'create permutations' it spits out:

search engine optimisation
optmisation search engine
"search engine optimisation"
"optimisation search engine"
[search engine optimisation]
[optimisation search engine]

In a list you can then copy and paste into Excel or straight into adwords. It's very useful for longer lists.

Still requires some manual editing (of course), but it certainly saves a lot of effort.

To create the initial list in Excel, you merely place each element in a cell, and then save as a csv file. For the example above, search engine would be in one field and optimisation in the next. If you had search and engine in separate cells, then it would also produce engine optimisation search - which you wouldn't want to use (well, probably not).

Would anyone else find this useful if we were to put it on our site for anyone to access?

Cheers,

Daniel

[symbolic]

[Would anyone else find this useful if we were to put it on our site for anyone to access?]

Yes, I would like to see it. I think this is a great idea for a few keywords, but could get out of hand with 20 or so. Am I right?

symbolic

[Searchaware]

Daniel

I would find that extremely useful too.

Simon

[amcrann]

that tool sounds excellent! I would love to see it.

[sri_gan]

Excel Macros are always the easy answers.

1. If you are an expert in MS Visual Basic it is like a piece of cake.

2. If you are not then all you need is to record a macro (seen in Tools ->Macro) and use it. If you are interested in programming then you can edit the macro and see whats the code inside it.

Other options you know it .