Replacing text

[Anonymous]

I have a country column which is abbreviated to ZA (for South Africa) etc, how do I create a new column with the full name of the countries rather than the abbreviated name (the abbreviation is only two letters long). 

[Greg_Deckler]

I would create a translation table, relate the tables and if you really need that column in your first table use RELATED or LOOKUPVALUE.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure I follow you (I'm relative novice). Can't I just add a column which tranlate ZA into South Africa. Can you explain what a translation table is?

[Greg_Deckler · Accepted solution]

Well, I am assuming that you have many different countries involved here. If that is not the case and everything is just ZA, then just create a column with the formula:

Column = "South Africa"

Otherwise, if you do have some additional countries, you could use a SWITCH statement:

=SWITCH([Country], 

     "ZA", "South America", 
     "US", "United States
)

But, in my opinion, creating an Enter Data query that supplies the translations is better than a SWITCH statement as it is more obvious, maintanable and requires no code.