adding a character

[enrico via OfficeKB.com]

how do i create a condition on a particular cell if it's characters are less
than 8 it will add a character? e.g. if i put "abcdefg" in my cell, there are
only 7 characters in it. the other cell will automatically add a new 1 before
the original character so it will become "zabcdefg" which "z" is the
character added to make it 8

 

[Dave Peterson]

And if it were only 1 character, you'd end up with:
zzzzzzza

And if it were empty, leave it empty?
=if(a1="","",right(rept("z",8)&a1,8))

This will actually truncate the string at 8 characters. If the original had
1000 characters, the formula will result in the 8 rightmost.

 

[enrico via OfficeKB.com]

what if there are a lot of characters? i don't want to truncate the other
values. all i want is if my variable inside the cell is less than 8
characters then it will add another one to make it 8

 

[Ron Rosenfeld]

how do i create a condition on a particular cell if it's characters are less
than 8 it will add a character? e.g. if i put "abcdefg" in my cell, there are
only 7 characters in it. the other cell will automatically add a new 1 before
the original character so it will become "zabcdefg" which "z" is the
character added to make it 8

Maybe:

=REPT("z",MAX(0,8-LEN(A1)))&A1

--ron

 

[Dave Peterson]

Just add another check:

=IF(A1="","",IF(LEN(A1)>8,A1,RIGHT(REPT("z",8)&A1,8)))