StartsWith and EndsWith
StartsWith and EndsWith
Formula: StartsWith() and EndsWith()
Category: String
StartsWith()Checks if string of text starts with chosen values
It’s kind of like saying...
EndsWith()Checks if string of text ends with chosen values
Or put another way...
StartsWith() and EndsWith() share two required parameters:
Text
StartsWith(Text, Prefix)
This is the text you want to the formula to check. 
Prefix/Suffix
StartsWith(Text, Prefix)
These are the values you want the check for at the start/end of your text.They also share two optional parameters:
IgnoreCase
StartsWith(Text, Prefix, IgnoreCase, IgnoreAccents)
"True" if you want to ignore case of the text; defaults to false. 
IgnoreAccents
Right(Text, Prefix, IgnoreCase, IgnoreAccents)
"True" if you want to ignore accents in the text; defaults to false.
StartsWith() and EndsWith() are as they seem. You provide them a text and they let you know if that text starts with or ends with a certain value.
Below is a table titled “Famous Book Openings” that consists of opening lines from different novels.
A student is doing research to determine how many novels start their books with vowels vs. consonants.This students uses StartsWith() and a helper table to find her answer in the gray “sentences” column below. Famous Book Openings
Name
Column 2
1
It was the best of times it was the worst of times.
2
I am an invisible man.
3
My name is Frank Bascombe.
4
Even Camilla had enjoyed masquerades, of the safe sort where the mask may be dropped at that critical moment it presumes itself as reality.
5
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
6
The street was darkened by a smoky sunset, and light had not yet come on in the lamps near the empty house.
7
Lately I have come to feel that the pigeons are spying on me.
8
The evening before my departure for Blithedale, I was returning to my bachelor-apartments, after attending the wonderful exhibition of the Veiled Lady, when an elderly-man of rather shabby appearance met me in an obscure part of the street.
9
By nightfall the headlines would be reporting devastation.
10
Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton.
11
At least once during the cyclone season, Anne Wendel and her four girls raced through the pouring yellow rain to the cellar.
There are no rows in this table
Vowel Helper Table
1
2
3
4
5
Vowel
Sentences
a
1
e
1
i
2
o
0
u
0
There are no rows in this table
Books That Start With Vowels
StartsWith() also has one other fantastic use-case. It is most often used to pull out action-items or tasks out of a Canvas Column full of free-form notes. Lets look at an example:
Below is a table of projects with a canvas Notes column. The Notes column is a free-form section for a team to take notes, jot down ideas, add screenshots, leave comments, etc. But often there are also embedded tasks within the free-form notes. StartsWith() allows you to filter through the notes section and pull out any lines that start with the word “Task:”.Click into the “Notes” column below to see the teams free-form notes. Then click into the Action Items column to see the formula utilizing StartsWith() to pull out any tasks.
Project
Assignees
Notes
Action Items
1
Annual Marketing Plan
Open
2
Product Launch
Open
3
Project: Spruce up the Emails
Open
There are no rows in this table
Further Details
The Action-Items formula which is in the screenshot above may seem intimidating, but here is what it’s doing.
Practice: Try your hand at using StartsWith() and EndsWith()
Done
Identify the number of countries in the Southern Hemisphere
Done
Send promotional emails to only specific Zip-Codes
Done
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