Excel/Open Office How can I replace this ?

I have two columns, A and B in open office(calc).

COLUMN A_______________COLUMNB
HORSE_______________this is some text in col B with a VARIABLE <a href=".....">link</a>
ELEPHANT_______________this is some random text in col B with other VARIABLE and a link <a href="..">blabla</a>

What I want is to replace in columnB "VARIABLE" with whats in columnA, so it should become:
HORSE_______________this is some text in col B with a HORSE <a href=".....">link</a>
ELEPHANT_______________this is some random text in col B with other ELEPHANT and a link <a href="..">blabla</a>

I know in excel and openoffice this is done with:

="this is random text "&A1&" blabla"

however, it's not working for me because it gets to the <a href=" part, and the first double quote it finds, it ruins everything. How can I do this ?

Have you tried scaping the quotes with "" or \" ?

I dont recall on openoffice but I think you scape it with another double-quote ""

Works with ""
Haven't thought of it ! Thank you !

Youre welcome, I've had similar issue in the past but was using Excel and some things are slight different from openoffice to excel.

Opensource softwares ?