custom format with text and numbers

This is probably simple, but I suck at custom formats.

I want a cell to display

A-12345

I want one character of text, followed by a dash, followed by 5 digits

so the person entering data only has to type

A12345

Bonus points if the letter character can be capitalized.

Custom formats only really work on numbers. You can use a custom format of:

"A-"00000

so that if your workers enter 12345 it will be displayed as A-12345, and 987 will be displayed as A-00987.

Hope this helps.

Pete

I see

No, the letter would have to be changeable. Was hoping this could be done as a time saver. Is there a formula that would work? Maybe using "TEXT"?

If you enter a letter followed by digits then it is a text value that you are entering - the TEXT function won't work on that, either.

However, if you don't mind the result that you want being in a different cell, then if you enter a12345 into cell A1, for example, then you could have this formula in B1:

=IF(A1="","",UPPER(LEFT(A1))"&"-"&RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-1))

and that will give you A-12345.

Hope this helps.

Pete

Thanks! I guess the only way to do this is to have it display in another cell.

I used:

=LEFT(A4,1)&"-"&RIGHT(A4,5)