Excel; exporting/importing different columns to different csv files

Question

Is there a way to batch export different columns to different csv files in excel on an OSX, I'm thinking something along the lines of possibly automator, applescript or bash. I've had a look play around with automator and so far no luck.

The best I have accomplished export the whole sheet, then use sed to strip out what I don't need, however this is terribly inefficient.

Also, is there a method, to batch import multiple csv files into columns.

Thanks in advance

&& sorry I didn't tag excel correctly it wouldn't allow me to create the excel:mac tag

Answer 1

Export the whole sheet to CSV and use AWK to split it into different files. As a simple example, this awk script will write each column into a different file.

#!/usr/bin/awk -f
{ 
    for (i=1; i<=NF; i++)
        print $i >> "file" i ".csv";
}

This script is not too intelligent. You should also specify the field separator at the beginning, and also make sure existing files are overwritten.