Converting postcode to sales area

I have some large spreadsheets with customer addresses and need to assign a
sales manager to each of then. The sales area is assigned by the first
letters in the postcode. I.e GL7 5TQ, GL means David, W15 0JD, W means Rob.
I have checked the IF function but that's limited to 7 functions and I have
some 70 odd postcodes to assign. I also tried the Lookup function, but I
didn't get it to work. ( not saying it works but I couldn't get it to
work...;-)

Has anyone a solution for this problem?

Cheers

Lars

Excel 2003

how did you have your lookup function set up?

"LarsF" wrote:

> I have some large spreadsheets with customer addresses and need to assign a
> sales manager to each of then. The sales area is assigned by the first
> letters in the postcode. I.e GL7 5TQ, GL means David, W15 0JD, W means Rob.
> I have checked the IF function but that's limited to 7 functions and I have
> some 70 odd postcodes to assign. I also tried the Lookup function, but I
> didn't get it to work. ( not saying it works but I couldn't get it to
> work...;-)
>
> Has anyone a solution for this problem?
>
> Cheers
>
> Lars
>
> Excel 2003

Well I searched the MS excel helpfile for the IF function and found the
Lookup from there, thought that the array Lookup should do it and tried
according to the examples there, modified it as :
=LOOKUP(A2,{GL,W},{"David","Rob"})

That return an Error box with no further help....

Then I looked at a function combining IF, ISNUMBER, and FIND, but that
seemed to only return one of 2 values, or true or false. ( I did a search for
"check if part of a cell matches specific test and return a value")

I'm stuck!

Thanks
Lars

"bj" wrote:

> how did you have your lookup function set up?
>
> "LarsF" wrote:
>
> > I have some large spreadsheets with customer addresses and need to assign a
> > sales manager to each of then. The sales area is assigned by the first
> > letters in the postcode. I.e GL7 5TQ, GL means David, W15 0JD, W means Rob.
> > I have checked the IF function but that's limited to 7 functions and I have
> > some 70 odd postcodes to assign. I also tried the Lookup function, but I
> > didn't get it to work. ( not saying it works but I couldn't get it to
> > work...;-)
> >
> > Has anyone a solution for this problem?
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > Lars
> >
> > Excel 2003