extract first letter from cell

[RAYLWARD102]

What's the easiest way for me to extract the first letter from a cell value or a string.
I'm creating macro code that will be inserting a new line of information but it needs to be entered alphabetically so I'm going to attempt to search by using the first letter of the cell and the first letter of the newly inserted data.

 

[Trevor G]

Can you show some sample data you want to use.

I am assuming you would use the Left function, but it is possible you have numbers in the cell as well before the letters, so it would be useful to see some sample data. You can copy the data normally and also use paste or one of the converts recommended on the Forum.

 

[Rick Rothstein]

Can you show some sample data you want to use.

To add to Trevor's request... can you show the before sample data and what it should look like after the code has run?

 

[RAYLWARD102]

The data will always be a letter.
Even if for some reason a number is entered as the first character, It doesn't matter. I'm going to get the FIRST CHARACTER from the new data and find the same letter in the column of data and insert the line accordingly at that point.
I'm only going by the first character for alphabetizing

so the column data would be a1= a, a2 = b, a3= c... and so on. I'll be getting the first letter of the newly entered string and then loop through the column data to find the same letter. That part of the macro is already done except for the finding the first character in a string or cell value.

 

[Rick Rothstein]

The data will always be a letter.
Even if for some reason a number is entered as the first character, It doesn't matter. I'm going to get the FIRST CHARACTER from the new data and find the same letter in the column of data and insert the line accordingly at that point.
I'm only going by the first character for alphabetizing

VB has a Left function that you can use to retrieve the left however many characters you want. Let's say you wanted the left character from cell A1...

LeftLetterInA1 = Left(Range("A1").Value, 1)

 

[Trevor G]

As I read your thread and you say it is text then left is the function, but you aren't clear and not willing to show some sample as requested so how can anyone help you !

Excel Workbook
	A	B
1	Data	Left Function
2	Middle	M
3	Later	L
4	Last	L
5	Tomorrow	T
Sheet1