Deleting starting and trailing characters scanned into cell

[glchat]

I'm scanning data into a spreadsheet using a barcode scanner, but I want the starting character and trailing characters to be removed after I hit enter.

For example...let's say I'm scanning the following text in cell A1:

=W05281212345600

When I hit enter (or the barcode scanner does auto-enter), I want cell A1 to read:

W052812123456

I will always want the "=" and the last two zeros removed from the 16 character number, leaving the 13-character number in its place.

I tried using Excel's various truncate functions (LEFT,RIGHT,MID, etc.), but that only places the corrected text in another cell. That would be fine if I could copy that truncated text back over the original text...but that created a loop problem.

Any ideas?

 

[Sal Paradise]

How is the column that the info gets scanned in to formatted? Is it formatted as text? If it is formatted as text, put this in the "ThisWorkbook" module in VBA.

Private Sub Workbook_SheetChange(ByVal Sh As Object, ByVal Target As Range)
    
    If Target.Cells.Count > 1 Or IsEmpty(Target) Then Exit Sub
    
    If Left(Target, 1) = "=" Then Target = Mid(Target, 2, 13)
    
End Sub