In my column of info I have ie....

abc
abc
abc01
trx
trx1
gaf
gaf2

What I need to do, is grab only the first three characters that are always
alpha, and remove all numbers.

Secondly, where do I go, to get real education on the formulas? I love
working with excel and my employer loves what I'm doing, but I need to go to
the next step.

Thanks!!

=LEFT(A1,3)

How i learned the majority of what i know of formulas was from hitting the
function button and reading the descriptions on all of the functions
available and trying the ones i liked. Other than that reading through here
for interesting requests and finding how they were solved goes a long way.
I'm sure there are plenty of books but i've never used them so can't
recommend any.
--
-John
Please rate when your question is answered to help us and others know what
is helpful.


"cware" wrote:

In my column of info I have ie....

abc
abc
abc01
trx
trx1
gaf
gaf2

What I need to do, is grab only the first three characters that are always
alpha, and remove all numbers.

Secondly, where do I go, to get real education on the formulas? I love
working with excel and my employer loves what I'm doing, but I need to go to
the next step.

Thanks!!

Assuming that your data is in column A, then you can use this formula in B1:

=LEFT(A1,3)

and then copy down.

As regards learning formulae in Excel, you could get a book, or you could
read the postings on these newsgroups and build up your own library of
useful formulae.

Hope this helps.

Pete

"cware" wrote in message
...
In my column of info I have ie....

abc
abc
abc01
trx
trx1
gaf
gaf2

What I need to do, is grab only the first three characters that are always
alpha, and remove all numbers.

Secondly, where do I go, to get real education on the formulas? I love
working with excel and my employer loves what I'm doing, but I need to go
to
the next step.

Thanks!!

You could use a helper column and put a formula like:
=left(a1,3)

You could select that column and then do
Data|text to columns (xl2003 menus)
Specify fixed width
and draw a separator line before the 4th character.

Then tell excel to ignore the 2nd field.

I don't think you can go wrong by starting with John Walkenbach's books.

Debra Dalgleish has a list of books at her site:
http://www.contextures.com/xlbooks.html

See if you can find them in your local bookstore/internet site and you can
choose what one you like best.

cware wrote:

In my column of info I have ie....

abc
abc
abc01
trx
trx1
gaf
gaf2

What I need to do, is grab only the first three characters that are always
alpha, and remove all numbers.

Secondly, where do I go, to get real education on the formulas? I love
working with excel and my employer loves what I'm doing, but I need to go to
the next step.

Thanks!!

--

Dave Peterson