Although there are many pros on this board, I am not one of them, so if this
doesn't help I will step aside and let one of them take over. It seems from
your response that the challenge is just to ignore the "1-" in "1-W" and pick
out the W (or C, or L). If that is correct, and the data always ends with
the one desired letter at the end, the RIGHT function should help:

=RIGHT(A2,1) will return "W" (no quotes) when the value of A2 is "1-W" (no
quotes).

So you could embed that function into your IF statements:

IF(RIGHT(A2,1)="W","I-BEAM",IF(RIGHT(A2,1)="C","CHANNEL",IF(RIGHT(A2,1)= "L",ANGLE,"N\A")))

"structuresc" wrote:


The contents of the in column A represent the call number (the name of
the member in the system) and member shape (W,C.L). In the example,
A2 = 1-W represents wide flange I-beam named 1; A3 = 2-W represents
wide flange I-beam named 2; A4 = 11-C represents C-channel shape named
11; A5 = 21-L represents angle shape member named 21. The numbers
(names) are relatively random and therefore would require a list over
5000 cells per shape type [W,C,L]. The only info needed for column B
is the shape.

The backgournd info: each member is shown on a drawing and called out
by its name; attached to the drawing is the excel spreadsheet
[schedule] that itemizes and details each member. The analysis program
output data produces an extensive list of members that does not
duplicate the member name (number). The excel macro extracts and
formats the necessary data accordingly. This formatted data is the
schedule attached to the drawing.


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structuresc
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