excel course tate modern - Data Validation

Hi Carolyn, thank you for the post, After much searching I have to report that I cannot find an option which can only be related to Access's "Input Mask" validation. This operation which is quite straightforward in Access does not seem to have a related operation in Excel.
I am putting my reputation on the line here, but I dont think that there is a way of doing what you ask, possibly this could be achieved by writing a VBA routine, if any one else has a solution I for one would be pleased to hear from you. best regards, Pete.

Dear Carolyn

I did some research and believe that this might help you in what you want to acheive.

Step 1: Select the cells or may be the entire column where you want this data Validation to be applied.
Step 2: Choose Data > Validation...
Step 3: From the drop down list in the Allow section choose Custom and then copy and paste this in the box :
=AND(LEN(A1)=4,ISNUMBER(--MID(A1,2,3)),NOT(ISNUMBER(LEFT(A1))))


LEN is for length of characters which in your case is 4
MID returns the characters from the middle of the text string, giving starting position and length.
ISNUMBER ensures that the data is a restricted as a number and not text.
Combined with the MID it ensure that the last three digits are restricted to Numbers
And the First one is resticticed to Text as it is NOT a NUMBER.

Hence getting your result.

Hope this helps

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