I do it all the time like this:

Assume ID is in column A and Group is in B

In B2 I would wirte the following:

=IF(left(A2,2)="DR","R","W")
copy this to each cell under Group. This assumes that "R"
and "W" are the only choices.


If you have many different types of groups, you could
consider a vlookup() statement.

=vlookup(Left(A2,2),a100:b110,2,false)

Where in a100 through b110 you have the following table
built.

A B
100 DR R
101 DW W
102 DC C
103 XX I

Hope this helps,

Chris B.


-----Original Message-----

Hi

I'm abit new at this and need help to do the following by
creating a
macro in visual basic.

I have a table in excel 2000 with many columns and a
range of rows that
can vary time to time. (the below example only shows two
columns and 5
rows to simplify it)

The problem is that i want to search the first column
(ID) for DR_*
(where * is any string after DR_). If it finds it in the
1st column
then it puts R in the next cell to the right (i.e in the
Group column.
On the other hand i also want to search for a string
starting with
"DW_" in 1st column and if it finds it, it puts a W in
the group
column. Is there any way to do this?

Example....
ID Group
DR_ALM1 R
DR_ALM2 R
DR_ALM3 R
DW_ALM1 W
DW_ALM2 W

Any help grateful

Thanks


palie


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