Assigning numerical values to certain charachers

J

Joel N

I'm trying to find out how to assign numerical values to specific letters.
It's just a simple matter of A=1, B=2, C=3 etc. What I need to do is to
write a paragraph for my college Lit. class that "equals" a certain number.
i.e. abc=6. Can anyone help?
 
R

Rick Rothstein \(MVP - VB\)

I'm trying to find out how to assign numerical values to specific letters.
It's just a simple matter of A=1, B=2, C=3 etc. What I need to do is to
write a paragraph for my college Lit. class that "equals" a certain
number.
i.e. abc=6. Can anyone help?
Click to expand...

Is you ultimate goal to be able to add up the letters in a particular cell
(where 'A' or 'a' is 1, 'B' or 'b' is 2, etc.)? Assuming spaces don't add
anything to the total, this formula should do that...

=SUMPRODUCT((CODE(MID(A1,ROW(INDIRECT("A1:A"&LEN(A1))),1))-96)*ISNUMBER(FIND(MID(A1,ROW(INDIRECT("A1:A"&LEN(A1))),1),"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz")))

where, for this example formula, I assumed the text was in A1. This formula
can be copied down.

Rick
 
J

Joel N

Actually, what I'm trying to do is write a paragraph in Word and total the
letters. It was recommended that I try Excel but it doesn't make sense to
try to type a paragraph in one cell. Any suggestions?
 
A

*alan*

Actually, Joel, you're being very unclear. What is it you *really* want to
do?
1. assign values to letters and get a total of the values? If so, then
you've been given the solution.
2. count the occurrences of each letter?
3. count the total number of letters?
4. none of the above?
 
R

Rick Rothstein \(MVP - VB\)

I'm not sure what you are asking of me at this point. Word is not Excel, so
the formula I gave you can't be used in Word. Word does have a VBA macro
language available like Excel does, but the Object model for each are
completely different; so, if you want a Word solution, then you are in the
wrong newsgroup. I'm not sure who recommended that you try Excel, but it
certainly can do what you asked (using the formula I posted earlier); and,
yes, you could enter (or copy/paste) a paragraph into a cell in Excel. I'm
curious, though, why would you want to add up the letter values for a
**large** paragraph of text?

Rick
 
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