Thanks Harlan, I can work with that


"Harlan Grove" wrote in message
...
"John" wrote...
One twist on this Bob, is that, is it possible to just count the Blanks to
the left of the first word. In my cell two words entered are valid but
that means a blank between the first and second, so I would have to allow
that. My idea is that when I get a value 0 then I delete the contents of
A1, but if two words are typed in that would return 1 and in that case I
would incorrectly delete. Thus blanks before the first word are the
entries that are invalid
...

If you want to eliminate leading spaces and would also accept eliminating
any trailing spaces and compressing any sequences of multiple spaces
between words into single spaces, use the TRIM function.

If you really want just the number of leading spaces, try

=FIND(LEFT(TRIM(A1),1),A1)-1