Extract Characters

[CThos]

Hi all..

I've read over quite a few posts that are very close/similar to what I need, but not having much luck finding an exact match!

I have a column with data formatted like this:

nails - short - batch12 - 2013
hammer - tier2 - inventory - 2000
screws - wh - local - order

I need to extract the data before the second hyphen (-). So my results would look like:

nails - short
hammer - tier2
screws - wh

I really prefer to use a formula. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Ace_XL]

Try

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[Andrew-R]

If your first row of data was in cell A2 then:

=TRIM(LEFT(A2,FIND("~",SUBSTITUTE(A2,"-","~",2))-1))

Coped down

[nathansav]

=MID(E12,1,FIND("-",E12,FIND("-",E12,1)+1)-1)

Where the splitting data is in E12

[CThos]

Thank you!