Hi,

I work at an elementary school and we keep track of student cafeteria
activities through excel. We have students in three categories:

1 - FREE
2 - REDUCED
3 - PAID

Each student's ID begins with a letter that corresponds to their
status.

Our spreadsheet has a colum of student ID's and we would like to
automate how many free, reduced an paid breakfasts and lunches we serve
each day.

The logic would go something like this:

1) Take the leftmost character of the cell
2) If it begins with a 1 - add it to the count of FREE lunches served
3) If it begins with a 2 - add it to the count of REDUCED lunches
served
4) If it begins with a 3 - add it to the count of PAID lunches served
5) Move on to the next cell down and do the same

I hope this makes sense. I'm not an excel person.

We currently have 3 seperate cells where FREE, REDUCED and PAID totals
are manually calculated and entered.

Would it be posible to insert the "FREE" formula in the FREE total
cell, etc.?

Any help would be appreciated - please fogive if the question is not
clear.

Thanks!