Strip characters from a string in Excel

Question

I want to strip off the last character in a string on a given cell. I was trying to use the following formula:

=LEFT(A2, LEN(A2)-1)

This pisses off Excel as it is a circular reference on cell A2...

I'm terrible with Excel formulas... any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

It works for me. Are you sure you are not changing the same cell (A2)

Answer 2

Do you need it in the same column? I'm not sure you can do that w/o VB.
Normally I just insert a column to the left of the input data, then use your above formula in column B.

Answer 3

Wotks for me, cell B1 = LEFT(A1,LEN(A1)-1), and A1 = tada, value = tad.

What exactly are you doing?