Is this possible?

[MaDHaVoK]

I imported a large database into Excel and am trying to manipulate the data... here is an example.

This is what i have now. Many many rows with 4 columns. Column 1 is a name. The next 3 colums may or may not have anything in them. What i need to do, is search those 3 columns to see if any of them start with the letter E. Only one or none of them can start with "E". If one of the three columns does start with "E" then I need to copy that cell to a new column in the corresponding row.

Here is my example.. I already have columns 1 - 4, how do i get 5?
__1________2______3_____4______5 becomes
John Doe___Pen____Van___Ear_____Ear
Jane Doe___Ear1___Pen___________Ear1
Smith______Van
Jones____________Ear66_________Ear66
Anand_____Pen5___Oar___Beer
Tech______Ear2__________Van____Ear2


How do i import the right value for column 5???

 

[Murphyrulez]

here's a quick and rough formula I just came up with that will do it.

=IF(LEFT(A1,1)="E",A1,IF(LEFT(B1,1)="e",B1,IF(LEFT(C1,1)="e",C1," ")))


That will take up to 3 columns, just add more for 4.
It's just checking the first letter of each cell for the letter E, if it finds it, it dumps the contents of that cell, if it doesn't find it, it goes to the next cell on the right, and if it doesn't find any at all, it just puts an empty space in.

let me know if that works for ya!