Make Cell show only first character

Hello all

I have a spreadsheet which details several products in the first column. Each product has a letter code e.g A1303, B1878, P3332 etc. The first character e.g A, B, P etc refers to the product type.

I want to be able to format the cell containing the product code so that it only shows the first letter e.g A or B or P.

The ultimate goal is to subtotal how many products there are of each type e.g how many a's, how many b's, how many c's etc. so I thought by somehow formatting the cells to show only the first letter, I could count how many products there are of each type.

I cant seem to do this using normal subtotal command as it will only let you count after each complete change in value rather than the first letter of the value.

Does anyone know the best way of doing this?

Many thanks.

just insert another colum that you want to do total in and use (where a1 is first cell of your list ofproduct code)
=LEFT(a1) and drag down