1 min readfrom Microsoft Excel | Help & Support with your Formula, Macro, and VBA problems | A Reddit Community

How to anonymize user names in a data set

Our take

Anonymizing usernames in a large dataset can seem daunting, especially when dealing with over 90,000 rows of text. Fortunately, there are streamlined methods to replace usernames marked by the "@" symbol efficiently, without the need for a lookup table. By utilizing Excel's powerful text functions, you can automate the substitution of usernames, transforming them into a generic format like "@xxxxxxx." This approach not only preserves your data’s integrity but also enhances user privacy, making it a practical solution for your anonymization needs.

I did this a long time ago and unfortunately I cannot remember how I did it.

I have a large dataset of over 90 000 rows. In each row, there are long texts. And in these texts, there are usernames, identified with the symbol @ before the name. What I need to do is to anonymise these user names. I remember that I was able to substitute them, from @ username to @ xxxxxxxe. Is this still possible in excel without making a lookup table? There are thousands of usernames, it would be very difficult to make one.

submitted by /u/Most-Original3996
[link] [comments]

Read on the original site

Open the publisher's page for the full experience

View original article

Tagged with