How can i can truncate upto certain characters in Excel VBA? - excel

Question

I have an excel sheet with some rows of descriptions in a single column, what I am aiming is to get a vba that would go though all those rows of descriptions and truncate it upto certain character limit for example 30 characters and if the truncation stops at 30 character in the middle of the word then I want the complete word(could extend beyond 30 characters in this case).
I tried to do this with the VBA code below, but I am not able to get what I am looking for.
Function foo(r As Range)
Dim sentence As Variant
Dim w As Integer
Dim ret As String
' assign this cell's value to an array called "sentence"
sentence = Split(r.Value, " ")
' iterate each word in the sentence
For w = LBound(sentence) To UBound(sentence)
' trim to 6 characters:
sentence(w) = Left(sentence(w), 6)
Next
' Join the array back to a string/sentence
ret = Join(sentence, " ")
'Make sure the sentence is max 20 chars:
ret = Left(ret, 20)
'return the value to your function expression:
foo = ret
End Function
I expect the code to go through all the rows of a specific column and truncate it upto 30 characters and if the truncation stops in the middle of the word, then it should keep that word.

Answer 1

Since you tagged it for a formula
=LEFT(A1,FIND(" ",A1,30)-1)

Answer 2

I think you're looking for the instr() function. This could give you the first space-character after position 30.
You would get the following:
Dim SpacePosition as Integer
'return the position for the first space-character after position 29
SpacePosition = Instr(30, r.value," ")
if SpacePosition <> 0 then
'fill ret with the substring up to the first space after position 29
ret = left(r.value, SpacePosition - 1)
else
'if there is no space-character (after position 29) then take the whole string
ret = r.value
end if
Hope that helps.

Answer 3

Best & brilliant solution by #scott Craner. However, In you VBA code you may Change the followings to get required result
'Join the array back to a string/sentence
'ret = Join(sentence, " ")
ret = ""
For w = LBound(sentence) To UBound(sentence)
' trim to 6 characters:
sentence(w) = Left(sentence(w), 6)
ret = ret & IIf(Len(ret) > 0, " ", "") & sentence(w)
If Len(ret) >= 30 Then Exit For
Next w
'Make sure the sentence is max 20 chars:
' ret = Left(ret, 20)

Answer 4

Public Function foo(r As Range, length As Integer) As String
If Len(r.Value) <= length Then
foo = r.Value
Else
foo = Left(r.Value, 1 + length)
foo = RTrim(Left(foo, InStrRev(foo, " ")))
End If
End Function
I suppose you would want to run that by passing 20 as the 2nd parameter

Answer 5

Loop rows from sheet 1, column A starting from row 1:
Option Explicit
Sub test()
Dim Lastrow As Long, i As Long
With ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Sheet1")
Lastrow = .Cells(.Rows.Count, "A").End(xlUp).Row
For i = 1 To Lastrow
'Insert Code
Next i
End With
End Sub