Extracting text from a column I want to import data from Excel into an existing table in a SQL Server database.

I have a column like Gender and the values are Male and Female in Excel. I want to insert only the first character into database, like M and F. 

How should I achieve this thing in SSIS for SQL Server 2008?
You can use a Derived Column transformation. Add an expression that converts the gender column into the initial. You can use something like SUBSTRING(GENDER,1,1) for this.