Refinate brings a wealth of tightly integrated features to the Excel environment.

Have you wrestled with trying to import documents properly into Excel?
Now you can do it the way you want. Refinate includes the ultimate point & click worksheet Parser/Importer/Auto-Editor. It is far and away more flexible and more able than Excel's own parser/importer. Now get many more different types of text documents into Excel quickly. You'll see cleaner parsing results even if your original document doesn't have fully aligned columns and even if it doesn't have a consistent delimiter character to use for defining column splits. And text can be modified during the import process. Reusable scripts are automatically created as you make your parsing choices by pointing and clicking. This parser/importer/auto-editor is an asset of high value for making Excel accessible for more applications. Use it as a BOM converter (bill of materials converter) or Netlist converter, or other document converter.

Refinate has a very special ability that you should know about as you read about each feature. It has the ability to discriminate down to each comma delimited item listed within single cells. That is, if one cell contains the text "X1,X2", Refinate is able to treat each "X1" and "X2" as individual items. So, each comma delimited item will be considered during duplicates checking, comparisons, counting, item subtraction, etc.. In addition, Refinate can discriminate each item implied by hyphenated range notation.  For instance, if a cell's content is "X1-X3", then Refinate would produce a quantity count of three if you requested a count. And if "X2" were subtracted from that same cell, the result would be "X1,X3". So if a feature is said to be able to operate on individual items, remember these abilities. This granularity is perfect for working with documents such as bill of materials (BOM) and Netlists used in the electronics industry (as well as for other documents listing integrated circuit device pad identities).

Need to find and manage Duplicates? 
Find duplicated whole rows, partial rows, or individual items. Just select one or more areas and click. Places tags within your information so you can revisit duplicates. Refinate works hand-in-hand with Excel's standard built-in AutoFilter (or Advanced Filter) and Sort to cluster duplicates for examination and editing. Optionally highlight duplicates. A report can be placed anywhere that lists all duplicates along with the number of occurrences.

Need to find and Compare lists or documents?
Compare whole rows, partial rows, or individual items without regard to row order. Just select two or more areas and click. Places tags within your information so you can revisit differences (uniques). Refinate works hand-in-hand with Excel's standard built-in AutoFilter (or Advanced Filter) and Sort to cluster differences for examination and editing. Optionally highlight differences. In addition to tagging and highlighting your source worksheet, a new worksheet will be created holding a Results Report of the differences. Excel's AutoFilter will already be set up for you to examine information of interest. Refinate can sort comma delimited items within cells. Use this prior to comparing whole or partial rows to prevent a difference from being reported about identical items that are merely arranged differently.

Need to find accurate quantities of items?
After someone hand edits a document, it can be nearly impossible to notice that the stated quantity no longer matches the amount of items in a list. Refinate can count the amount of items selected (including comma delimited items as well as items within hyphenated ranges). Additionally, Refinate can place on each row a total quantity count of all items found in that row within the selection. Prior to generating a quantity count, Refinate can be used to consolidate down to a single row all items related to a single record that are spread out across many rows. By first performing the consolidation of items down to one row, the quantity counts Refinate places on each row will reflect the total count for a given record's items. 

For example, on a bill of materials, a part for the assembly might be used in many different locations of the same assembly (the same switch might be used in two places, for instance). A unique reference designator is assigned for each location the part is used. But for some bill of materials document styles, a single part's reference designators are listed across several rows instead of only on the same row as the part to be purchased. So use Refinate to consolidate all reference designators down to the main row that holds the associated part number and then generate an accurate quantity count for the purchase of that part.

Want to move associate information spread across multiple rows down into a single row so that you can sort the whole list properly?
Oftentimes, the best way to organize data in a worksheet is into single row records so that you can take advantage of some of Excel more powerful features (such as Sort and AutoFilter, etc.). But information isn't always arranged like that. Refinate can recognize information "spread out" across rows among your entire listing and reduce each down to single row records. Just select and area and click.

Refinate provides you with tools to support your creativity in new ways for your everyday worksheets. And it also provides you with the power to accomplish some major tasks you otherwise would need to purchase specialized software for. Refinate adds flexibility to Excel and aids you as you accomplish both major and minor tasks using generic Excel worksheets. Refinate provides a fresh new way to frame your ideas.

Refinate does not travel with the worksheet and it's not necessary to use Refinate once the worksheet is created. Your worksheets can be passed around to anybody. Refinate does not require your data to be structured in any special manner for it to be useful, although, it can be used to create formal structure for your data if you like.

Data integrity and verification are strong points of Refinate.  Whenever data in a document is hand edited, problems can arise. Refinate provides means for making automatic edits and automatic count adjustments (for BOM, for instance). Refinate has syntax and duplicates checking that will flag issues with indexed items (e.g., reference designators) which are likely to occur during hand editing. Have Refinate count all reference designators before making purchases to be sure any changes made by hand are accounted for in the stated quantity.

Refinate comes with many other features that can make information easier to view in place, and has other features that can rearrange information to become more readable and usable in a worksheet. As an example, often when you paste from the web into Excel you end up with a jumble of merged cells and apparent disjointed information. With one click, Refinate makes that information immediately visibly coherent. You can even quickly create a database of records out of information pasted from web pages by using Refinate.

This action can overwrite the source (can make changes by iterations) and it can create a new worksheet to hold the output results.

The Ultimate Point & Click Excel Worksheet Parser/Importer will allow you to quickly get textual documents and information from a wide variety of sources into Excel in an orderly fashion. This Text Converter/Import action is as easy to use as Excel's import facility or as its TextToColumns facility for the identical tasks. 

An instant advantage of Refinate's Text Converter/ Import is that its scripts can be easily saved, reused, and shared. 
Scripts are created automatically as you choose from the provided options -- you will not need to write scripts.

Unlike Excel's import facility which allows only single characters to be chosen as delimiters to indicate where a column split should occur, Refinate allows any text to be typed which, if found in the source text, trips an event operation. Choose the operation to be performed at the found text from the dropdown options. For each found text (each event), you may choose to split (parse) the source into a new column, or replace the text at the event with other text you provide, or have new text inserted immediately before or after the event, or cut text away, and more. There are two types of commands, Global and Step. Use a Global command to perform the same operation on every occurrence of the same specified text. When a Step command is used, the specified text must be found in the source (as many repetitions as specified) before any subsequent commands will be processed. In this way, Step commands permit conditional operations, and they can be used to perform different operations on the same text characters found in different places in a line of source text (e.g., for source text "xxxx", replace the first "x" with "a", and insert "b" at the third "x").

You might have experienced the frustration of trying to use Excel's Fixed Width setting to split (parse) text into columns. The problem arises when information you want to parse is arranged in columns but you can't locate a position for a column split that won't cut up at least some text that bleeds across into neighboring fields. Refinate addresses this issue by providing the useful setting called Fixed Width Soft. Just set the column boundaries to include the leftmost text of each field and if any text bleeds across that boundary from the previous field, it will not be cut up -- it will remain with the previous fields. All text will be placed within the field that it originated in. And if you need to delineate fields by more than one space, there is an option for that. And when Fixed Width Soft can't do your parsing job all by itself, include other Step commands (such as a command that will cause column splits to occur in whitespace areas).

Text Converter/ Import can make context sensitive edits that overwrite information selected on the worksheet, or it can create a new worksheet to hold the results of an import.

This action can highlight and place tags within the source and a list reporting duplicates and their occurrence count can be placed anywhere.

Refinate includes many options for locating and handling duplicates. One option is to find duplicates of individual items within your selection (including multiple comma delimited items contained within single cells). When searching for duplicates of individual items, an option is available to look inside hyphenated range notation. For example, a cell containing "R2" and a cell containing "R1-4" would both be found to contain a duplicate of "R2". Another option is to find partial row or whole row duplication within the columns (fields) you have restricted your search to.

Select as many columns as you would like included in the duplicates search and be brought to each location of a duplicate (optional). If you edit a visited duplicate, a comment tag will be placed at the edit that holds a log of the change. Highlight any cell containing a duplicate. Enable tagging to have text tag placed in the worksheet at rows containing a duplication. These tags allow you great flexibility in how you manage duplicates. Because the tags remain in place as long as you like, they can be used to navigate at any time to visit the duplicates at their normal location in your list (by using End-Down or End-Up). The tags can quite simply be used together with Excel's AutoFilter (or Advanced Filter) to display only the rows which contain duplicates for you to make decisions on how to handle those records considering each record's full content. And the tags can be used together with Excel's Sort to group duplicates together for assessment.

When you choose to find duplicates of any individual item occurring anywhere within your selection, the text of the placed tags will identify the specific items of that row that are duplicated somewhere (even if there is a duplication within the same row -- ideal for locating and identifying duplicated reference designators in BOMs).

Additionally, a report of found duplicates and their occurrence count will be shown in Refinate's windows. The report can be pasted directly into a worksheet or any other application.

Each row's count will be placed into a cell to the right of the selection.

This action will provide an accurate count of all items found on each row within the selection. If there are multiple comma delimited items contained within a cell, they will all be counted (e.g., "R1,R3,R5" in a single cell is counted as 3 items). Additionally, it will count items that are represented using hyphenated range syntax (e.g., "R1-10" is counted as 10 items).

Prior to generating a quantity count, if items associated with a single record are spread across multiple rows, use Refinate to reduce those rows down to one row and have it consolidate the spread out items into a single cell of the single row. This way, Refinate will post a single total quantity for each record.

For example, on a bill of materials, a part to be installed on a manufactured printed circuit board might be used multiple times on the same board (the same type of switch might be used in two places, for instance). A unique reference designator is assigned for each location the part is used. But some bill of materials documents are arranged such that all reference designators for a single part are listed across several rows -- not all on the same row as the part number to be purchased. So use Refinate to consolidate all reference designators down to the same single row that holds the part number, and then generate an accurate quantity count for the purchase of that part.

This action can highlight and place tags within the sources being compared and it can also generate a new worksheet that holds a report.

Select two or more areas of the worksheet to compare against each other for differences. Use this feature for determining what is within one list (or document) that is not within another list (or document). The differences will be revealed and an optional report can be generated. Whole rows, partial rows, or comma delimited items can be compared among areas selected. For example, use it to find the differences between two bills of materials or two printed circuit board Netlists. 

Here are some things you can do using this feature:
● Compare full or partial rows (compare documents)
● Compare lists of individual items (including multiple comma delimited items within single cells)
● Paste lists of items found which are unique to each group being compared
● Generate a new report sheet listing only differences (uniques)
● Highlight rows with differences (uniques)
● Tag rows with differences
Note: These added Tags can be used with Excel's AutoFilter (or Advanced Filter), or with Excel's Sort to view and to work among only the rows with differences. Tags can call out the unique items found within a row, and the Tags can be used to identify which of the two selected areas the tagged difference belongs to.

Read about Refinate's powerful Text Converter/Import to see that Refinate can convert documents while importing into Excel. That ability in conjunction with Reduce Rows to One (if needed), permits you to convert two different documents styles containing the same information into the same style so they can then be compared using Refinate's Compare2/Uniques.

This action creates a new worksheet and the original source worksheet remains unchanged.

If a document has information spread out across multiple rows that is related to a single object, you can use this action to gather the spread out information and have it all placed into one row for the object (for all objects selected in your worksheet). After using this action to convert the format into single row records, you can to take advantage of important Excel features (Sort, AutoFilter, Advanced Filter, etc.) and Refinate features (compare, item counts, etc.). Additionally, this action can consolidate (and optionally sort) many cells of items into a single cell of the record (consolidating and sorting reference designators or netlist nodes, for instance). This version of Refinate recognizes the start/end of each record based on one of three document format styles; "Indented", "After Empty Cell", or "Name Change".

For example, if a BOM uses many rows per part and has reference designators spread across multiple rows, this action can be used to reduce the parts information down to one row while consolidating all referenced designators into a single cell of the record. You can then use Refinate to place into the adjacent column an accurate count of each part's reference designators -- which is the true amount of parts needing to be purchased. This works even if the reference designators are represented using hyphenated range notation (e.g., resistors "R1-R4" will be counted as 4 items). As another example, this action can consolidate nodes of a netlist so that Excel can be used to sort the list, or so that Refinate can be used to compare different netlist documents against one another.

This action creates a new worksheet and the original source worksheet remains unchanged.

If a document has single row records where each record might have one column (one cell of the record) which contains many comma delimited items (such as reference designators or netlist nodes, etc,), this can be used to expand those rows such that all information of each record is replicated for as many times as there are comma delimited items associated with that record. And only one of the original comma delimited items will be placed on each new row. This can be sorted and compared against another list processed the same way.

For example, if one Part on a BOM list occupies one row and has three reference designators listed in one cell, this will replicate all of the part information three times (three rows) and will put only one unique reference designator into each of the three new rows. Or for a Netlist that has a Netname on one row followed by ten Nodes on the same row in the adjacent cell, this will replicate the Netname ten times (ten rows ) and only one Node will be placed in the adjacent cell for each copy of the Netname.

This action will put a new list of items next to your original list where you can easily confirm you're getting the results you desire.

The new list will not include any items that were put into Refinate's display prior to initiating this action. This is how to create a sub list from a master list with omissions. Follow this up with an automatic generation of new quantities.

Refinate's Query will locate cells which contain specified items. It will look within hyphenated ranges. For instance, it will locate a cell which contains "R1-R4,R6" if the search is for "R2". If you're looking for a specific word or name when there are many words or names within single cells, Query will find them. A shortcoming of Excel's Find is that when there are multiple words within single cells, Excel finds every occurrence of the name even if it's only a partial match. For instance, if you want to locate "R1" using Excel, Excel would bring you to "R1", and "R10", and "R101", and "R1x". Refinate's Query would only bring you to cells which contain the item "R1". If Query is used to edit a found cell, a comment tag will be placed at that cell to log your changes. Those comment tags can be made visible or hidden and can also be included in a printout.

This action places information wherever you click a cell for it to begin.

When information is pasted into Excel, Excel attempts to interpret the nature of the data and it might incorrectly enter it as something other than you wanted. For instance, if the information you want to paste begins with an "=" sign, Excel will assume you are pasting a formula even if you are not, and you will end up with a cell error.

Use this action to copy and paste (via the clipboard) your text documents into Excel safely as Refinate prevents any misinterpretation of your text import. Paste Safe to Cursor also makes sure no data will be overwritten. After Pasting Safe to Cursor, select the specific information to be converted into numbers or dates, etc., and apply Refinate's Number Values action.

For parsing text documents, first use Paste Safe to Cursor and then use Refinate's Text Converter/Import to parse it into columns.

Also, you can use this action to safely paste any items that are held within Refinate's windows that might be misinterpreted by Excel if pasted directly to the worksheet.

The results of this action are placed into the column to the right of the selection where it can easily be reviewed next to the source and where it can also become a new field in your database.

This action can be used to reverse the order of names (for sorting purposes) and optionally remove certain text from the name (e.g., Mr., Mrs., Dr., etc.). This action will also append the last name to a second person if two people are listed in the same cell. For instance, if this action were applied to "Mrs. Jane and Mr. John Smith,PHD", then the result "Smith John, Smith Jane" would be placed in the column to its right. Since Refinate works with comma delimited items, there are now two items in that cell that can be operated on by Refinate and each could be checked for duplication if desired. Also, you would now be able to use Refinate's Expand Row to Many to make two complete records for each of the two people who were listed within the same name field.