Text to Numbers

Just like that, each alphabet corresponds to a number, summing up alphabets

I cant really see how this post could be useful to you. One of my friends who believed in numerology brought this problem to me of converting names to numbers. Here is the solution that we worked out. You may treat this as a Just Like That entry until it finds any use.

Lets say the names are stored in column A, have worked out a numerical equivalent in column B using the equivalence (A or a =1) and (Z or z = 26) with all other alphabets in between

Method 1: Using CODE function

For windows CODE(text) returns the ANSI code of the first character in the text string.

• code(“A”)=65 and code(“Z”)=90 with all other upper case alphabets in between
• code(“a”)=97 and code(“z”)=122 with all other lower case alphabets in between

The formula in B2 {=SUM(CODE(MID(LOWER(A2),ROW(INDIRECT(“1:”&LEN(A2))),1))-96)}

entered as an array formula with ctrl+shift+enter

Here lower function is used so that all alphabets are treated as lower case and ansi code is from 97 to 122

Hence, 96 is subtracted so that a has numerical equivalent of 1

Cell A4 (Anup Agarwal) has space between the first name and last name. We can use substitute function to replace the space with no space. The revised formula in cell B4 is

B4 {=SUM(CODE(MID(LOWER(SUBSTITUTE(A4,” “,””)),ROW(INDIRECT(“1:”&LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A4,” “,””)))),1))-96)}

again entered as an array formula with ctrl+shift+enter

Method 2: Using lookup function

You can avoid using CODE function and use the lookup function to achieve the same result. Have defined the following table as equivalent

 

The formula entered in B2  {=SUM(LOOKUP(MID(A2,ROW(INDIRECT(“1:”&LEN(A2))),1),equivalent))}

entered as an array formula with ctrl+shift+enter

The formula entered in B4 is

{=SUM(LOOKUP(MID(SUBSTITUTE(A4,” “,””),ROW(INDIRECT(“1:”&LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A4,” “,””)))),1),equivalent))}

entered as an array formula with ctrl+shift+enter

Have fun and let me know if you ever find use of it 🙂

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Remove spaces from a cell

Often when a list is imported from another application, you would find that there are unwanted spaces within cells.
If there are spaces in a numeric cell, excel reads it as text field. This means no calculation can be carried out on them.
For instance if a cell contains 1234 1 (space between 4 and 1), this becomes a text field and no arithmetic operation can be carried out. If you add 1 to the cell it displays #VALUE! error.

We would make use of two excel functions to get rid of unwanted spaces

TRIM and SUBSTITUTE

TRIM function removes spaces from

• before the start of text eg ” 123″
• after the end of text eg “123 “
• if there are more than one spaces in the middle of the text eg. “1 23” (there are two spaces between 1 and 2, trim would remove one of them)

Cell B12 shows the use of Substitute function. The function replaces all spaces ” ” with no space “”

ps: you can find the length of a string using LEN function. The function has been used in column C. For instance C2 contains the function LEN(B2)

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