Parent with Left & Find

Peggy Parchert

I'm trying to create a column formula that will populate with the leftmost word in the Parent column.

I know this formula works:

=LEFT([Task Name]@row, FIND(" ", [Task Name]@row) - 1)

But when I put PARENT in front, it comes back as #UNPARSEABLE

=PARENT(LEFT([Task Name]@row, FIND(" ", [Task Name]@row) - 1))

What am I doing wrong? Is this not possible? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks -Peggy

Kelly Moore

Hey @Peggy Parchert

How about this

=LEFT(PARENT([Task Name]@row), FIND(" ", PARENT([Task Name]@row)) - 1)

Kelly Moore

Hey @Peggy Parchert

If I understand correctly, you want to add your formula to a Parent row?

If yes, one approach is to use an IF statement and look to see if the row has Children. If a row has children, it is a parent row.

=IF(COUNT(CHILDREN())>0, LEFT([Task Name]@row, FIND(" ", [Task Name]@row) - 1))

Does this do what you wanted?

Peggy Parchert

Hello @Kelly Moore - thank you for responding.

No - I really didn't explain things very well.

I'm trying to setup a column formula that looks at the PARENT row to populate the field.

Below is a screenshot of my sheet

I'm trying to get the Timeline column to populate with the left words from the Parent row for each phase of the project. So PLANNING, COMING SOON or COUNTDOWN, etc.

The Timeline | Task Name column is a JOIN formula:

=JOIN(Timeline@row + " | " + [Task Name]@row)

I want to make it a column formula so that if lines are entered, I don't need to make sure the formula is copied.

Makes sense?

Kelly Moore

Hey @Peggy Parchert

How about this

=LEFT(PARENT([Task Name]@row), FIND(" ", PARENT([Task Name]@row)) - 1)

Peggy Parchert

@Kelly Moore - that worked! Thank you very much!