Acronyms in Excel

    When you want to create acronyms in Excel, there are several approaches.

    There are the entirely VBA-based solutions, such as those found at Better Solutions Acronym UDF or Excel VBA Macro's Acronym function.

    Here is a formula that can do the same thing, but with one caveat: it only works on three-letter acronyms. In other words, it only works on cells with three words. It isn't as intelligent as the UDF from Better Solutions, but doesn't acquire the overhead that accompanies UDFs.

=LEFT(A1,1)&MID(A1,FIND(" ",A1)+1,1)&MID(A1,FIND(" ",A1,FIND(" ",A1)+1)+1,1)

    We can bake some intelligence into this formula, albeit awkwardly, by checking the number of words in the cell using the formula

=LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ",""))+1

    and then using the CHOOSE to select the appropriate formula to apply. For example, the following formula creates acronyms for any phrase up to three words:

=CHOOSE(LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ",""))+1,LEFT(A1,1),LEFT(A1,1)&MID(A1,FIND(" ",A1)+1,1),LEFT(A1,1)&MID(A1,FIND(" ",A1)+1,1)&MID(A1,FIND(" ",A1,FIND(" ",A1)+1)+1,1))