Forum Discussion
Displaying individual digits from a serial number
I have to create a spreadsheet to create serial numbers then break the serial number down to it's individual digits. I might not be explaining this that well so an example of what i need to achieve is this
Cell A2-1234567890 then Cell B2 will display 1, C2 will display 2, D2 will display 3 and so on for the whole of the 10 digit number.
Any and all advice or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Pete
5 Replies
- Thank you for taking the time to explain it for me
HansVogelaar Thank you so much for that.
If it isn't too much trouble would you mind explaining the formula so i know how it's working?
The COLUMN() function returns the column number of the cell containing the formula: 1 in column A, 2 in column B, etc.
The MID function has syntax MID(textstring, start, length). It returns length characters beginning at position start in textstring.
So for example in B2, MID($A2, COLUMN()-1, 1) evaluates to MID($A2, 2-1, 1) which is equivalent to MID($A2, 1, 1). This returns 1 character starting at position 1, i.e. the first digit of the number in A2.
And in C2, MID($A2, COLUMN()-1, 1) evaluates to MID($A2, 3-1, 1) which is equivalent to MID($A2, 2, 1). This returns 1 character starting at position 2, i.e. the second digit of A2.
