Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 18:44:14 -0600 (CST)
   From: Mark Jacobson <jacobson@math-cs.cns.uni.edu>
     To: 810-021-01-spring@uni.edu
Subject: Excel March 7th class review...

Hi 021 students,

      In today's class we covered the following five Excel functions:

      LEFT(), MID(), RIGHT(), FIND() and CONCATENATE()

      Examples:

       =LEFT("Spring break", 3)    would display Spr in the cell
              ---                                ---

       =LEFT(A2, 1)   would display the leftmost 1 character, i.e. the
                      1st character, of whatever was stored in spreadsheet
                      cell A2.

       =LEFT(some string, how many characters you want)

       =MID("Spring break", 3, 4) would return or display ring
               ----                                       ----

       =MID(B2, 6, 3) would display bus if Ghostbusters was stored in cell B2
                                    ---         ---

       =MID(string data, where to start in string, how many characters)

            is the format of the MID() function...

       =FIND(what to find, where to look for it) is the simple version of
                                                 the FIND function we
                                                 used.
       =FIND(" ", "Jimi Hendrix") would return 5 as the position of
                                  the space.

       =FIND(" ", "Cinderella Smith") would return 11 as the location
                   1234567890123      of the space.

       =MID("Charles Babbage", FIND(" ", "Charles Babbage") + 1, 1)

       would become:

          =MID("Charles Babbage", 8 + 1, 1) and would then become
          =MID("Charles Babbage", 9, 1)

       and finally would display or return B, which is the
       last name first letter, the last name initial for Charles Babbage.
                                                                 -

       Finally, the CONCATENATE() function.

       =CONCATENATE( LEFT("John Atanasoff", 1), ".", "A", ".") would
                           -                     -    -    -

                           display J.A.

       If cell A2 contained the string Charles Babbage, the
       following formula would return or display what?

       =CONCATENATE( LEFT(A2, 1), ".", MID(A2, FIND(" ", A2) + 1, 1), "." )

        You are correct!

          C.B. would be the displayed result.

       =CONCATENATE( LEFT(A2, 1), ".", MID(A2, FIND(" ", A2) + 1, 1), "." )
                                           --  -----------------  -

           becomes

       =CONCATENATE( LEFT(A2, 1), ".", MID(A2, 8 + 1, 1), "." )
                                           --  -----  -

           becomes

       =CONCATENATE( LEFT(A2, 1), ".", MID(A2, 9, 1), "." )
                                           --  -  -

           becomes

       =CONCATENATE( "C" , "." , "B" , "." )
                      -     -     -     -

           becomes

       "C.B." and thus C.B. is dispalyed.
        ----           ----

        Right at the end of class we covered the
        RIGHT() function, right?

        =RIGHT("Panthers", 4) would return hers since hers is the
                              rightmost 4 character of Panthers.
                                                           ----
        =RIGHT("GHOSTBUSTERS", 1) would return the very last
                                  letter of GHOSTBUSTERS.
                                                       -

        What would =LEFT( RIGHT("Panthers", 7), 3) return or display???

        ant would be the result.

        =LEFT( RIGHT("Panthers", 7), 3) goes to

              =LEFT( "anthers", 3) and that goes to
                      ---

                      ant which is the final result.
                      ---

    See you on Friday in the Wright 112 lab.

    If I don't see you then, have a good spring break.
    If I do see you then, have a good spring break too.  :-)

    Mark