Often when you are processing customer records or doing mail merge, it might be useful to get initials from a given name, like JFK for John F Kennedy.
You can do this using simple text formulas (left(), mid(), find()) combined with if(). Here is how:
Assuming cell B3 has the full name, then this is the formula you can use to get the Initials:
=if(len(B3)-len(SUBSTITUTE(B3," ",""))=0,left(B3,1),if(len(B3)-len(SUBSTITUTE(B3," ",""))=1,left(B3,1)&mid(B3,find(" ",B3)+1,1),left(B3,1)&mid(B3,find(" ",B3)+1,1)&mid(B3,find(" ",B3,find(" ",B3)+1)+1,1)))
As you can see, I have used different logic to find initials, based on the number of spaces in the name.
For the sake of simplicity I have limited the formula for names with three, two and one part only (ie first name, middle name and last name), for some reason if the name has more than 3 parts, then this formula would result in initials for the first three chunks of the name. See the example on google docs.
More on names and text formulas: Find word count using excel formulas, 15 excel formulas for everyone, Generate tag clouds using VBA.
7 Responses to “CP014: How to create awesome dashboards – 10 step process for you”
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Hello Chandoo,
i am one of the great fan of your. i am one MIS executive in realstate company.And i try make dash board for CRM(Client Relation Management) Dept formance and anlysis process.Its get created not so effective according to can u suggest me .what i hve to give or take for makeing it for effective and attractive?.
regards,
Shashak verma
Hi,
I want to create an interactive dashboard in excel (Google Drive) which should have multiple data along with beautiful charts..
I handle two teams in IT Tech support so were preparing 2 different dashboards.. however need to club and want to create single report, can anyone help something like