I'm in the financial reporter and I have a .range of accounts and in the column I'm using for description I'm using:
=GLDESC("Unexpanded Description",3,$B11)
So all I want to know how to do is get the description to for a NON .range account to show the account description with a 3 character indent...
This should be the easiest thing in the world, but I just can't figure it out...
Thanks for any input!

Hugh:

I usually just use " Description" = that's "<space><space><space>Description"

This will return the first description in the range defined in B11

=STRCAT(" ",ADGETF("GLDATA.DESC",B11))

Yup, that'll work! Thanks!
Seems cumbersome though... you'd think if they went to the trouble of embedding an indent term in their description command for expandable lines they'd have made it consistent for non expanding lines as well!

Hi Hugh,

What do you mean by cumbersome? Expanded lines will have some sort of heading and thus the expanded details look better with an indent. Raw desriptions may not require this indent on it's own.

The financial reporter just reads the account description from the data, and you can append 3 spaces in front of it with a formula. That's how you would do it with Excel if you wanted to pre-append text from a value in a different cell.

For a single account, as opposed to a range of accounts, you could also use:
=" " & GLAMT("DESC",$B11)
where B11 is the cell location of the single account.

That's tidier! Although you're still counting spaces vs spec'ing them.
I don't think I expressed my point terribly well... I think I should have said that I find it unintuitive that it is inconsistent with the indent term for expanding lines. I frequently prepare statements where I want some accounts bundled and others on their own in the same column so in unexpanded form I want them all indented... So let's say I want to see Wages seperately from Benefits, but the Benefits are composed of a variety of accounts, and then I want to see Advertising seperately... here's the coding to get the three lines to have the identical look:

=" "&GLAMT("DESC",$B11)
=GLDESC("All Benefits",3,$B12)
=" "&GLAMT("DESC",$B13)

No problem once you know, but it's awkward mixing the concept of counting spaces between the quotation marks with keying in the number of spaces required!

Thanks for the quick responses!

Perhaps if:

returned the description of the first account in the range, that would be more consistent.

Yes, exactly!!! I can't tell you how many times I keyed that exact formula in thinking 'this HAS to work... I must just be missing a comma or something'...
I know,