Take Control of Numbers, 3rd Edition

Work with Text Functions

Suppose your friend/brother/boss gives you a spreadsheet of names and addresses and says: “I need just a list of names—last name followed by a comma and then the first initial. The state abbreviations need to be capitalized and the city, state, and zip code columns need to be combined—with a comma after the city, and a space between the state and zip code. And, oh, can you generate email addresses from the last name, the first two letters of the first name, the ‘at’ symbol…”.

Yes, you can do all these things—and easily, since Numbers lets you manipulate text in many ways. In this chapter, after you get acquainted with text terminology, you’ll Learn Basic String Manipulations—combining and splitting strings of alphanumeric ...