ms excel......

[R1Geezer]

This is what I'd like to acheive:

I have a column that conains text entries for example:
AAA12345NNNKKK
BBB45678XXXBBB
etc

now I would like to have a cell somewhere else that contains the number of lines that start "AAA" and similar for BBB etc etc. Does any kind Excell expert no how to achieve this? Thanks

[Bushwhacker]

I will take it your data is in column A and that cell A1 contains the header name of Information

In cell B1 give your new column the header name Truncated.

In cell B2 insert the function =LEFT(A2,3) and fill this down the column.

Next Highlight column B and Copy and Paste Special Values.

Do a Pivot Table with Truncated in the Row and Count of Information in the Data.

That should do the job.

BW

[R1Geezer]

Thanks I'll have a go.

[Aquariel]

As an alterntive to the above, you can also do it using wildcards with this formula:

=COUNTIF(A1:A40,"AAA*")
=COUNTIF(A1:A40,"BBB*")
etc.

where A1:A40 is the range of data.