Croping text lengths in excel

[arcprophet]

Hello, I am new here but hope someone can help me out. I need to crop a
colum in excel to be no longer than 15 characters. However most of the
text is about 20-30 in lengh. I need the text croped so it only has the
first 15 characters and not the rest. Is this possible and if so how?

Regards
Hal

 

[JulieD]

Hi

two options:
1) use a helper column, in a column adjacent to your data type
=LEFT(A1,15) and fill down
where A1 is the first cell with information in it. To fill down, move the
cursor over the bottom right hand corner of the cell with the formula in it
until you see a + then double click. You can then copy this column & edit /
paste special - values over the original to replace it with the truncated
text. You can then delete the helper column.

2) or select the column of text and choose
data / text to columns
choose "fixed width" click NEXT
click on the 15 bit on the ruler
(drag any other black arrows off the screen) click NEXT
select the 2nd column (the bits you don't want) and choose "do not import
(skip)"
click FINISH

Cheers
JulieD

 

[Jurry]

Text can be cropped using the LEFT function:

=Left(A1,15)

This crops the text in cell A1 to 15 characters.

Jurry

 

[Don Guillett]

or
sub left15()
for each c in selection
c.value=left(c,15)
next
end sub