Hello,

I'm working with a school database I created from importing and merging
other peoples files and data.  It provides a list of all schools in a region
and the grades they offer.  The grades offered column is text and contains
string variables with different lengths, for example,
row 1 = K-12
row 2 = k-6,10-12
row 3 = 1-3, 6-9
row 4 = k-3  

I want to create a new column grouping the grades so I can group them into
primary, elementary and so on.   So, the new column would look like

Row 1 K-12
Row 2 K-12
Row 3 1-9
Row 4 k-3

Basically I want to select the first and last character in the string.  How
can I do this if the length of strings vary from row to row?

Thanks for any and all help.  I'm completely stuck.