capturing a letter

[@Homeonthecouch]

Hello
I am wanting to capture a certain letter in a string of letters say a name.
I would like to say have a name entered in cell A1.
From there I would like to capture the first letter in cell B1.
In cell C1 I would like to capture the 3rd letter.

So, A1 would have Smith Input
and
Cell B1 would be S
Cell C1 would be I

Is there a formula?

 

[Guest]

With
A1: Smith

Here are some options

The 1st letter....
B1: =LEFT(A1,1)
or
B1: =MID($A1,1,1)

The 2nd letter....
C1: =MID($A1,2,1)

The 3rd letter....
D1: =MID($A1,3,1)

etc

OR....if you feel like being a tiny bit ambitious.....
This one formula does it all
B1: =MID($A1,COLUMNS($B1:B1),1)

copy that formula across to the right

Does that help?
***********
Regards,
Ron

XL2002, WinXP

 

[Bob Phillips]

=LEFT(A1,1)

=MID(A1,3,1)

--
HTH

Bob Phillips

(there's no email, no snail mail, but somewhere should be gmail in my addy)

 

[=?iso-8859-1?q?Jesper_L=FCtzen?=]

Hello
I am wanting to capture a certain letter in a string of letters say a name.
I would like to say have a name entered in cell A1.
From there I would like to capture the first letter in cell B1.
In cell C1 I would like to capture the 3rd letter.

So, A1 would have Smith Input
and
Cell B1 would be S
Cell C1 would be I

Is there a formula?

A combination of 2 formulas can do the trick:

=right(left(A1;3);1)

Read it like this: From the left (beginning) og cell A1, get the first
3 letters. Then from the right (end) of that result, take the first
letter. In other words, this formula outputs the third letter from the
left.


/Jesper

 

[@Homeonthecouch]

I'm gonna try them all

Thanks to the above.

Andrew.

 

[Beege]

With
A1: Smith

Here are some options

The 1st letter....
B1: =LEFT(A1,1)
or
B1: =MID($A1,1,1)

The 2nd letter....
C1: =MID($A1,2,1)

The 3rd letter....
D1: =MID($A1,3,1)

etc

OR....if you feel like being a tiny bit ambitious.....
This one formula does it all
B1: =MID($A1,COLUMNS($B1:B1),1)

copy that formula across to the right

Does that help?
***********
Regards,
Ron

XL2002, WinXP

hi,

I think the OP would like to see how to extract S and I from "Smith
Input, like one would for initials. Therefore there might be a
SEARCH(A1, " ") in there somewhere.

Beege

 

[Guest]

Hmmmm....as Beege pointed out (thanks, Beege), you seem to be looking for
initials, right? (I thought by "A1 would have Smith Input" you meant:
input Smith in A1 <bg>)

So...
B1: =LEFT(A1,1)
C1: =IF(COUNTIF(A1,"* ?*"),MID(A1,FIND(" ",A1)+1,1),"")

(I'm guessing there may or may not be a space and, if there is a space, it
may not have any letters after it. I'm not trapping double-space errors,
though)

Is that something you can work with?
***********
Regards,
Ron

XL2002, WinXP

 

[@Homeonthecouch]

Well your both right but I also wanted to pick out the third letter in the
name

I got it to work with the =MID($A1,3,1)

It did the job a treat, I assume, like many things in life Excel has the
same principals.
There's more than one way to skin a cat.

As always thanks for the help to all my questions I have raised in this
group, it's a great education when the Excel help cant understand a basic
question and you have to ask it specifically about something you don't know
about. Catch 22! Oh Joy.


Andrew