Automating totals for keywords

Hi, I am relatively new to Excel. I use it mainly for accounting, and realised that I was spending a lot of time doing repetitive highlighting of cells and copy/paste. I know the basics of programming so I'm prepared to dive in at the deep end.

What I would like to do is the following:

• search an annual .csv I export from my online banking
• separate results by month (format I get is 01/07/2014)
• find keywords within a string and create a group total (Sainsburys & Waitrose goes to a total for 'food', LUL & First Capital Connect goes to a total for 'travel' etc)
• I would then copy and paste this into another spreadsheet, but if it would be possible to import the totals to specific fields that would be even better.
• It would also be useful to highlight cells that contain a certain keyword in different colours

Is any of the above possible and feasible?

Yes, possible, but all of what you're asking is highly dependent of the layout of your workbook. Can you post the workbook or an example with a before and after of what you want?

Thanks, it would look something like this

My other spreadsheet has various fields for importing into, but its mainly this manual selection bit that takes time.

How will the code "know" what is Postal / Expenses and what is Food Shopping? Will every Postal expense have the word POST in the description?

Yes, exactly.
I would collect groups of keywords that will always refer to a specific category.
It would be a specific keyword within a string. See my OP for a couple of examples.
After doing this for a while I can say that the keywords are pretty consistent.