"Lars-Åke Aspelin" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 14 Dec 2008 11:54:15 -0000, "DB." wrote:


"Lars-Åke Aspelin" wrote in message
. ..
On Sun, 14 Dec 2008 11:29:38 -0000, "DB."
wrote:


"Lars-Åke Aspelin" wrote in message
m...
On Sat, 13 Dec 2008 13:50:01 -0800, robert
wrote:

I have text cells with text separated by the slash character. For
example:
northern/coast What formula will tell me how many characters are
to
the left
of the "/" character? The answer to my example would be 8.


Try this formula:

=FIND("/",A1)-1

Hope this helps / Lars-Åke


When you clever guys give us 'newusers' solutions to our
problems
I
like to look at those solutions to see if I can work out the logic
behind them, and thus maybe learn a little about Excel.
In this case I found myself asking "So what formula will Robert
need
if he wants to know how many characters are to the *right* of the
"/"
character? The answer's not at all obvious - not to me, anyway!
I guess it will start with FIND - but what follows?

TIA of any reply,


FIND is used to find the position of a string within another string.
If you combine that with the LEN() function that returns the length
of
a string you can calculate the number of characters to the right.

Hope this helps / Lars-Åke


Thanks for your reply - and so quick! Aren't you going to spell it
out
for me? I'll struggle all week with the LEN() function!
If I live to a million years I'll never get to the bottom of this
marvellous Excel!

BW's - and a Happy Christmas, when it arrives.


Of course I can spell it out, just didn't want to spoil the fun for
you of finding out yourself after doing some experimenting:

1) Put your text, containing the some characters, "/", and some more
characters in cell A1.
2) Put the formula =FIND("/",A1) in cell A2. What does it show?
3) Put the formula =LEN(A1) in cell A3, What does it show?
4) How many characters are there to the right of the "/" in cell A1?
5) Find out a way to combine the formulas in A2 and A3 to get the
result you want.

Hope this helps / Lars-Åke


Thanks again! Your reply gives me summat to occupy a wet Sunday
afternoon here in Buckinghamshire, UK..
I'll not trouble you further!

--
DB.