Get characters on left of specified character in Excel

M

Murugan

In an Excel column I am having values like
A1 - abcd - abcdedfg
A2 - abc - zyxwvu
A3 - ab - mnopq

I need a formula to get all characters left of the hypen for each value in
another column. Hypen may occur in any position (except first).

Any pointers? Thanks in Advance
 
R

Roger Govier

Hi

If you are talking about Left of the first hyphen, then
=LEFT(A1,FIND("-",A1)-1)

If you are talking about left of the second hyphen then
=LEFT(A1,FIND("^",SUBSTITUTE(A1,"-","^",2))-1)

If you are talking about between the 2 hyphens then
=MID(A1,FIND("-",A1)+2,FIND("^",SUBSTITUTE(A1,"-","^",2))-FIND("-",A1)-2)
 
M

Murugan

Thanks a lot. It really helped.

Roger Govier said:
Hi

If you are talking about Left of the first hyphen, then
=LEFT(A1,FIND("-",A1)-1)

If you are talking about left of the second hyphen then
=LEFT(A1,FIND("^",SUBSTITUTE(A1,"-","^",2))-1)

If you are talking about between the 2 hyphens then
=MID(A1,FIND("-",A1)+2,FIND("^",SUBSTITUTE(A1,"-","^",2))-FIND("-",A1)-2)
Click to expand...
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Similar Threads

Problem with MS Word paragraph and character styles: format getting messed up 2
Looking to added up based on a character from cell range 1
Help creating a formula that repeats text & increments an integer 3
Formula to validate characters within a string of data in aparticular cell 1
IF a cell only contains a specific character then reformat the tex 3
sorting oddity 1
How do I get more than 255 characters into a cell? 3
Copy string of characters 4

Top