Display first letter of a word?

[Steve]

I want to display just the first letter of a word.

For example if in cell A1 is the entry SIMON

How do I get excel to just display the first letter? "S"

Manythansk

 

[Don Guillett]

Have a look in the help index for LEFT

 

[Shane Devenshire]

Hi,

Try

=LEFT(A1)

 

[Ekun]

Incomplete, You forgot the number of characters to return. Try
LEFT(A1,1)

 

[Don Guillett]

Really Ekun!!. Have a look in the help index for LEFT

 

[Justin Case]

Hi all,

Just a thought, but Steve wrote:

"I want to **display** just the first letter of a word. "

To mask (not extract) all but the first letter, he could use this
macro on a selection.

Sub ShowFirst()
For Each cll In Selection
bkgrnd = cll.Interior.ColorIndex
With cll.Characters(Start:=2, Length:=256).Font
.ColorIndex = bkgrnd
End With
Next cll
End Sub

This sets all but the first letter to the same color as the
background. It's not very robust, It will only work on text, not
formulas.

Regards,
Justin

 

[Roger Govier]

Not incomplete at all.
Without the extra parameter of length of string, the function defaults to 1.

For clarity, for a newcomer to the function, I agree that the inclusion of
the length parameter may help the understanding, but Shane's response was
not incomplete, nor incorrect.

 

[Ron Rosenfeld]

Incomplete, You forgot the number of characters to return. Try
LEFT(A1,1)

Did you even try Shane's formula? Or at least read HELP for the LEFT worksheet
function? If you had, you would not have posted your erroneous information.
--ron