For future reference, you can press Alt plus F8, type in the name for your
new subroutine and then press the 'Create' button. An alternate is to press
Alt plus F11 to go directly to the Visual Basic for Applications Editor but
then a new module isn't automatically created for you as the storage place
for new subroutines or user defined functions.

Once you have created a macro, Alt plus F11 is the way to go back and edit
that subroutine or add new subs.

Steve



"Jeff" wrote in message
...
Thank you.

For David's module I went about it in a circuitous way because I did not
know how to create a macro. I first created a fake macro by recording
"something". I then went to Macros and click on edit. Instead of editing
it I deleted its contents and inserted David's and it worked. (Because I
did not know how to create one from scratch I had to improvise. Excel's
help was not helpful here).

Jeff

Steve Yandl wrote:
The subroutine ("macro") would be placed in a module, the same as you
did with the macro created by David.

The first word and the space that follows it would be removed.

The changes are made in the original cell and it doesn't matter what
is in the adjacent columns.


Steve



"Jeff" wrote in message
...
Daer Steve

First thank you very very much. I was starting to think there was
no real way to do this.

Now the questions because I am far from an expert in Excel:
1. What do I do with this code? How do I make it into a macro I can
use? Where do I enter it?
2. When you say this "will remove the first word prior to the
space", will it also remove that space that follows that first word?
3. Does it do its changes in the same field and column or do I need
to add an empty column to the right for it to copy the results to?

Again, thank you very much.

Jeff


Steve Yandl wrote:
Jeff,

Here is a slightly different approach than David's. The sub between
the lines will remove the first word prior to the space unless there
is only a single name and then it leaves the cell alone (could be
altered). For the example, I have it just handling column "B:B" but
that too can be changed. If you have a header row, it will work on
that as well so that might need to be changed.

_________________________________

Sub CleanColumnB()
Dim rngX As Range
Dim strName As String
Set rngX = Intersect(Columns("B:B"), ActiveSheet.UsedRange)
For Each myCell In rngX
strName = myCell.Text
txtArray = Split(strName, " ")
If UBound(txtArray) 0 Then
strName = ""
For T = 1 To UBound(txtArray)
strName = strName & " " & txtArray(T)
Next T
myCell.Value = LTrim(strName)
End If
Next myCell
End Sub

________________________________

Steve



"Jeff" wrote in message
...
Hi

I'm working in 2002 and have a spreadsheet with several columns.
One of the columns has text consisting of a surname and several
other names after each entry. That is each field (or line) in that
column contains several words. I need to delete the first word
(happens to be the surname) in each field in that column. Because
a dealing with several thousand records, I would obviously like to
create a macro to do this, one line at a time. I attempted to
create this macro with the "record a macro" function. But it has
not worked for me. The macro I produced just pastes the same end
result (from the first field) in every field I run it. Example:
Changing "Smith John Andrew" to "John Andrew"
Changing "Henderson Frank: to "Frank"
etc.

Basically, once I am in a field in that column, I want the macro to
do its thing, I would like it to:

F2 (to edit the field)
Home (to go to the beginning of the text words)
Shift-Ctrl-Right arrow (to select the first word)
Delete (to delete that selected first word)
Enter (to accept the result ad move to the next field below it).

I have been unsuccessful in creating that macro - or at least it
does not work correctly when recorded and just pastes the results
of the first field I created the macro in. Is it possible to
create such a macro? I do not know Visual basic and therefore
cannot
write it from scratch, assuming it was possible to do so.

Can someone help? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Jeff