Calculate change in blood pressure

I have a pre- and a post-test blood pressure value. The table also has
other pre/post values, so I don't think that splitting systolic/diastolic
values into 2 cells is feasible. How do I calculate the change b/w the two
compound values?

Thank you for your help.
pre post
122/85 130/70

I'd split the values. I would guess that if they are actually shown for example as 122/85 in your cell, they must be text formatted, not numerical or the value of 122 divided by 85 would result.

If no blank column to the right of the "pre" column, insert one. Do that by clicking at the top of the column AFTER the "pre" column to select the whole column, then anyplace in the selected column, right click and select "insert" in the dropdown menu. That will insert a blank column following the "pre" column. I think you need to do this to keep from overwriting an adjacent column that may contain data you don't want to overwrite.

Select DATA from the menu bar, and in the dropdown menu, select "Text to Columns" to open the Text to Columns Wizard.

In Step #1 of the wizard, "delimited" is probably selected by default. If not, select it. You could use "fixed width" but I think you'll see that "delimited" will be easier. Click NEXT.

In Step #2, uncheck "TAB. Check "Other" and enter a "/" in the box to the right of the word "other". The columns will be shown as they will be split. Notice, the "/" isn't shown. If you'd have used "fixed width" it would have been considered part of the split, though in Step #3, you could deselect it. You can now click NEXT to go to the last step which would let you deselect columns and do other things, but for your purposes, I think you are done, and insteadof Step #3, you can just click FINISH.

I think that the format of the cells will be general, so it should see the results as numbers. If not, just select the columns again and format the cells to numbers.

Your question implied that if you could separate them, you'd be able to do what you want, so I assume this gets you to that point.

Optiker

Brian,

With the "pre" value in cell A1, and the "post" value in cell B1:

=LEFT(B1,FIND("/",B1)-1)-LEFT(A1,FIND("/",A1)-1) & "/"
&MID(B1,FIND("/",B1)+1,3)-MID(A1,FIND("/",A1)+1,3)

HTH,
Bernie
MS Excel MVP


"BRIAN LEE via OfficeKB.com" <forum@nospam.OfficeKB.com> wrote in message
news:3b3cff8ab6724b50bd7c775f213c4384@OfficeKB.com...
> I have a pre- and a post-test blood pressure value. The table also has
> other pre/post values, so I don't think that splitting systolic/diastolic
> values into 2 cells is feasible. How do I calculate the change b/w the
two
> compound values?
>
> Thank you for your help.
> pre post
> 122/85 130/70

Excellent...thanks for your help!

Brian

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