Hi All,

I've not had a lot of luck trying to resolve this via Google searches so I'm opening this one out to you guys.

The problem is simple. I want to alert a user that he or she has typed in a text string that begins or ends with an apostrophe ' or begins or ends with a quotation mark " so that they can take corrective action in removing these characters. The reasons for this are superflous to this post but what I thought was a logical answer returns a formula error. Here's the scenario:-

A user enters a string of text in cell A1.

Cell B1 checks if the text, if any, in A1 begins or ends with a ' or a " and if it does, returns an "Error" message

The formula I've tried in B1 is =IF(OR(LEFT(A1,1)="'",LEFT(A1,1)=""",RIGHT(A1,1)="'",RIGHT(A1,1)=""")),"Error","Ok") but Excel will have none of it

Has anyone come across this scenario and found a solution.

Many thanks.