Need to know if their is a way to limit the amount of data that is in a column

**sxblackmon** · 07-24-2012, 04:12 PM

I wanted to know if anyone knows of a way to edit columns. More specifically I have 3 columns of data in Notepad. One of these columns contains zip codes. I want to import the data into Excel. Once their I want to edit the zip code field so that this data does not contain the plus 4 data on the end of the zip code. In other words is their a way to take a column of zip codes that contain the zip code(11123-4564) and use a function or formula that could edit it to (11123)?

**tigeravatar** · 07-24-2012, 04:16 PM

sxblackmon,

Welcome to the forum!
You could use this formula (assumes the zip codes start in cell A1):

=--LEFT(A1,5)

Then copy -> paste special -> values over the original zip codes
Now you can delete the formula column
Then just format the column as custom: 00000

Alternate:
Use Text to Columns on the zip code column with the hyphen as the delimiter, then delete the plus 4 data column.