We present an easy-to-use step-wise procedure to synthesize an initial-dividing wall column (i-DWC) from any given n-component basic distillation column sequence or its thermally coupled derivative. The procedure to be used is dependent on the nature of the distillation column sequence that is to be converted into a DWC, and comprises of an intuitive set of steps that we demonstrate through examples. It is noteworthy that, even for a ternary distillation, 15 potentially useful DWCs, some of which had been missing from the literature, have now been identified. This work significantly expands the search space of useful DWCs to separate any given multicomponent mixture. (c) 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 64: 649-659, 2018