Hi

How can I get Excel (2003) to return just the first 4 words of another
cell?
With thanks


Ship
Shiperton Henethe

On Fri, 07 Sep 2007 03:37:37 -0700, ship wrote:

Hi

How can I get Excel (2003) to return just the first 4 words of another
cell?
With thanks


Ship
Shiperton Henethe

What do you want to do if there are less than four words in the cell?

This should get you started. Substitute what you want for less than four words
for the string in the formula below.

=IF((LEN(TRIM(A1))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(A1)," ","")))<4,
"LESS THAN FOUR WORDS",
LEFT(TRIM(A1),FIND(CHAR(1),SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(A1)," ",CHAR(1),4))-1))


--ron

Assuming you have no carets (^) in your cell, and assuming the cell with the
string you want to act on is A1, try

=LEFT(A1,FIND("^",SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","^",4))-1)


"ship" wrote:

Hi

How can I get Excel (2003) to return just the first 4 words of another
cell?
With thanks


Ship
Shiperton Henethe

try this with your string in A1

=LEFT(A1,FIND(" ",A1,FIND(" ",A1,FIND(" ",A1,FIND(" ",A1,FIND("
",A1,1)+1)+1)+1)))

Mike

"ship" wrote:

Hi

How can I get Excel (2003) to return just the first 4 words of another
cell?
With thanks


Ship
Shiperton Henethe