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Hi Reader,

Welcome to the Google Sheets Tips newsletter #358, your Monday morning espresso, in spreadsheet form!

Today's tip comes from an accidental discovery I made whilst researching a trick with the LEFT and RIGHT functions.

Let me ask you...

What do you think happens with this formula? (Answer before trying it in your Sheet ;) )

= "A" < "B"

Check out the answer in today's tip and see a real-world application below.

➜ News

I.
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➜ Sheets Tip #358: Alphabet Comparison Trick

So it turns out you can use comparison operators (less than "<" and more than ">") with text strings!

For example, ="A"<="B" outputs TRUE because the A is before B in the alphabet.

(One way to understand this is to convert the letters to their decimal unicode characters and determine which is bigger or smaller. The unicode character for "A" is 65 in decimal terms. "B" is 66, etc.)

More examples:

So this is quite interesting!

Let's see a real-world application.

Practical Use Case

Suppose we work in a library and want to order our books into groups based on the first letter of the author's surname.

We can use this formula to do that!

Firstly, the LEFT function is used to get the first letter of the surname.

Quick tip: LEFT(A2) is shorthand for LEFT(A2,1)

This letter is compared to "M" and the surnames are then assigned a group by an IF function.

In our Sheet:

A neat little formula!

What if you want more groups?

Use an IFS function (here combined with LET for readability) to achieve that:

In our Sheet:

Very satisfying! I do love a good formula 😍

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please forward it to a friend who might enjoy it.

Have a great week!

Cheers,
Ben

P.S. Phew and nope​