Generating a numerical value from a set of letters - comparing two lists?

Hi everyone,

I've got a column of groups of letters, (in this case exam results) and I would like to generate a numerical value off that, so that I can get some statistics. So I have a column, which has, say, AAA, ABB, CDU, BEC, A*AAA, BD, U... and next to that I would like an index to show how well overall that candidate did.

So:

Is there an easy way of separating a single cell with multiple letters into multiple cells with single letters (so I won't have to produce such a large look-up table)

How do I cycle through my results, compare the result to the value on the look-up table, and print an adjacent column if they are the same.

Thanks in advance for any help, also, if there's an easier way of solving the problem than my outline above, please tell me!

Can you upload a sample file?

Hi, that text to columns button was useful, I didn't know about that, thanks.

I'm attaching a file that looks like the one I'll bu using, now, I want to assign a numerical value to each grade, say, A* = 20, A = 15, B = 12, C = 10, D = 8 E = 5, U = 0, then I want to sum the total score in the next empty column. How should I do that, a lot of nested if loops?