Export tags to separate column?

Question

When exporting information, is it possible to separate each contacts' various tags into separate columns?

That way I'd be able to sort the resulting spreadsheet by specific tags, instead of having to create a separate spreadsheet for each tag.

Answer 1

What you're asking for isn't doable out of the box. However, most spreadsheet programs (including Excel and LibreOffice Calc) will do this for you. Here's a formula that I tested in LibreOffice and should work without modification in Excel:

=IF(ISERR((SEARCH("Volunteer",$A2))), "", "Volunteer")

Paste this into an empty column at row 2. Replace both instances of "Volunteer" with the text of the tag you'd like in that column. Change the "A" in "A2" to the letter corresponding to the column that contains your tags. Your new cell will now contain (only) the tag you're searching for in your tags if it's present, or be blank if not. Copy this formula down the page for all rows, and of course repeat in new columns for any other tags you want to track in other columns.

Note that if you're just doing this to count numbers, you're better off with something like this:

=COUNTIF(A:A,"Volunteer")