Putting text in a column based on variable text from another colum

[Guest]

I started a simple excel list. At this point, I have over 20000+ entries, and
I just realized that text in column A should actually be placed in another
column. For example, If column A has the following values:
T16256
F56236
G89562
I would want to see text such as
Tooling
Fixture
Gauge
in column F and have that letter in Column A taken out. The other problem
is, not all of the cells in column A start with the alpha character, some
are numeric only, and others have alpha characters after position 1 that I
would not want to include.
I'm not exactly profecient in Excel, I think I can somehow do this with a
multi-step conditional format or validation of the columns, but I'm just not
sure where to start. I'm hoping this doesn't require the writing of a macro,
I'm a little lost here.
Can anyone help point me in the right direction, I would be very grateful.
Thanks,
Jacky D.

 

[Frank Kabel]

Hi
1. Enter the following formulas:
in B1 enter:
=IF(ISNUMBER(--LEFT(A1,1)),A1,MID(A1,2,255))

in C1 enter
=IF(ISNUMBER(--LEFT(A1,1)),"",IF(LEFT(A1,1)="T","Tooling",IF(LEFT(A1,1)="F","Fixture",IF(LEFT(A1,1)="G","Gauge","not
defined"))))

2. Now copy both formulas down for all rows

3. Copy these two columns and use 'Edit - Paste Special - Values' to remove
the formulas

4. Now you can delete column A