What symbol is used in this formula for "any letter."

I have a little formula here that I need an couple of "any letter" symbols to make it work. I've looked it up all over the web and have found my question, but the answers start talking about numbers and numbers have nothing to do with it. Here's the formula. The "M??" is where the problem is.

=SUMPRODUCT((D$9:D$512=("M??"))*(B$9:B$512=("Manufacturing")))

The "M" is actually part of a 3 letter code, and I want it to look up "M(who cares what letter)(who cares what letter)" So it will count up MVP, MLB, MNR, etc. The only commonality being that the code starts with M and has a total of 3 letters.

Testing it with a single letter code shows it works just fine, and will count anything with "M" in D9:D512 that also has "Manufacturing" is B9:B512 (it will ignore those entries without M in D9:D512, or with a different word than "Manufacturing" in B9:B512). But D9:D512 has a 3 letter code, and I want it to ignore the two letters after the "M".

Thank You!

Mogadeet

Try

=SUMPRODUCT((LEFT(D$9:D$512,1)="M")*(B$9:B$512=("Manufacturing")))

Thank You! It worked perfectly! Just what I wanted.

I assume that the "LEFT" has got something to do with it, like "Look at leftmost letter." Since there's a small list of things I'm sorting out like that (some beginning with "P" and some with "D" and so on) I quickly discovered it was just what I needed.

Thanks again!

A little piece of trivia. I'm currently working out of Bryan, Ohio.

Mogadeet

You're welcome.