How to explain 区取り位置

Question

In MS Excel 区切り位置 is a label that corresponds to English "Text to Columns" functionality. I understand that 位置 means place, but cannot find any translation of 区切り and cannot combine these two together to make any sense of it.

Answer 1

I think you might have a typo there and actually be referring to 区切{くぎ}り位置{いち}.

区切{くぎ}り means actually "punctuation / junction" (and notice that according to my dictionary it can also be written as 句切り (which might make the sense more clear).

位置{いち}　means "place - position".

I am not that familiar with excel but it should be more like a "position delimiter" rather than "text to number". Are you 100% sure of the correspondence with "text to number"?

EDIT: Ok I did some more research. I think you are using Excel 2007 or 2010 correct? From 2013 the icon seems to be different.

The 区切{くぎ}り位置{いち} seems to correspond to "Text to columns" in English. This makes more sense than "text to numbers". In fact, you can use the "text to columns" to separate the contents of one Excel cell into separate columns. (For example, if you want to separate a list of full names into last and first names).

So the Japanese translation I think could be thought as if you are "delmiting/cutting off locations" (as a verb, 区切る means "to cut off, to punctuate, to delimit). So basically you are setting delimiters for some particular locations.

Here is a reference in Japanese, and pasting the link I just notice that the URL name is indeed text-to-columns.