Phone standardization — three Replace Values steps on the Phone column:
Replace
With
Heals
.
-
184 dot-format rows
(
(nothing)
167 paren-format rows
) (paren + space)
-
The 163 already-dashed rows pass through untouched — replacements that find nothing change
nothing, which is what makes this recipe safe to replay on any month's file. Counts are the
verified figures from the raw-file profile (of the 514 raw rows; after dedup yours total 500).
Split. Name → Split Column → By Delimiter → space, at the
left-most delimiter → rename to FirstName / LastName. Left-most matters: it splits
once, so a name with any surprise in it degrades gracefully instead of spraying columns.
The reorder (step 4). With Split moved above Trim, the 49 names with
trailing spaces split into a LastName ending in a space — "Thorne " — because the
split ran while the dirt was still there, and Trim afterward fixed only the original Name
column, which no longer feeds anything. Result: the same disease you cured in Mild,
reintroduced into a new column by sequencing alone. Dragged back below Trim, the split
consumes clean input and the problem vanishes.
Reflection answers
The phone replacements were independent — none produced text another
consumed. Trim-then-Split is a dependency: Split consumes what Trim produces.
Order matters exactly when steps feed each other, and the Applied Steps list is where that
dependency is visible and controllable.
In a spreadsheet: a helper column, a formula per format or a long nested SUBSTITUTE, fill
down, paste-values, delete the helper — an hour, destroyed the moment next month's export
replaces the file. Here: three recorded steps that replay forever. This asymmetry is the
entire argument for the tool.