Nested OR in an IF statement, possibly parenthesis issue?

[opal1989]

Hi all, thank you for reading.

I am working with a large date set and I need to identify all of the cells in a certain row that start with a vowel. I have created a new column next to the column in question and entered this statement:

IF(Left(A1,1) = OR("a","e","i","o","u"), "vowel", " ")

This returns #VALUE...I don't know if it's an issue with my parenthesis or my placement of the OR statement.

Conversely, when I enter this formula it works:
IF(OR(Left(A1,1) = "a", (Left(A1,1) = "e"), (Left(A1,1) = "i"), (Left(A1,1) = "o"), (Left(A1,1) = "u")), "vowel", " ")

This is so long and inefficient, thought it works. I noticed I didn't close the parenthesis after the "a", though when I did add one it no longer worked and read: Too many formulas.

I really want to present a more efficient formula. Alternatively I could apply a macro in VBA, though I don't know how that works.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

 

[Weazel]

maybe like this...

=IF(OR(LEFT(A3,1)={"a","e","I","0","u"}),"vowel","")

 

[opal1989]

Works! Thank you so much Weazel! I haven't seen {} used before, are you creating an Array or is that just a way to distinguish different statements?

 

[opal1989]

Works! Thank you so much Weazel! I haven't seen {} used before, are you creating an Array or is that just a way to distinguish different statements?

 

[Weazel]

essentially you're creating an array of values that the OR will test against the value returned by the left.
since these values are fixed, you can create an array constant instead of repeating the whole logical test
I forget all the details as to how the OR handles multiple values compared to the AND which cannot.