Help help, combining limited data

[khaos]

HI guys I was wondering if you could help me with writing a formula that meets this criteria...

1. I need to combine Text in column A to Column B (=A1&B1)
2. BUT I only need the first letter of coumn A to combine with the rest of column B
3. Columb C needs to be <= 10 chracters

Goal :
Text in Column C for row 1 = sAAABBBCCCD
Text in Column C for row 2 = gBBBBBBCCCD

If it doesnt have to be all in one formual, I mean I can combine A and B and then do a formula for C, i just need the results to be the first letter of the A column combined with <= 9 digits of the Column B

--------------------------------------------
Text in column A Text in Column B
--------------------------------------------
smith | AAABBBCCCDDDEEE
george | BBBBBBCCCDDDEEE
anna | CCCBBBCCCDDDEEE
joe | AAABBBCCCDDDEEE




If someone could help me out that would be AWESOME (i'll be forever grateful!)

[Tristan]

Hi Khaos

Try this formula in cell C1:

=left($A$1,1) & left($B$1,9)

This should pick out the first character (the leftmost) in cell A1 and then combine it with the first 9 characters (again the leftmost) of cell B1.
You'll never get a answer that has greater than 10 characters and it will only be less if there are not at least 9 characters in the string in cell B1.

Other useful text manipulation tricks are:

Right - Returns characters from the end of a string
Mid - Returns characters from teh middle of a string given a starting character number
Len - Returns the number of characters in a string (useful to put into further formulae)

Hope this all helps

Tris

[khaos]

Thanks much looks like it worked!