pick certain characters

**janjan_376** · 06-19-2009, 10:21 AM

Please help me on the following scenario:

I have column A which always contains character "-". I would like to be able to just get the characters before the "-" and be able to copy that on col B.

example:

A1= "1234f - bla bla bla2"
A2= "H3B - bla bla bla3"

I would like to get only 1234f an copy it to B1 and so on. Please help. Thank you.

**kraljb** · 06-19-2009, 10:28 AM

Try using the LEFT and FIND formulas as such

=LEFT(A1,FIND("-",A1)-1)

Hope that helps...
John

**ChemistB** · 06-19-2009, 10:29 AM

=LEFT(A1,SEARCH("-",A1)-1)

Assuming there's not a space in front of the -. Otherwise, you can preceed it with TRIM or do use -2 instead of -1. Does that work for you?

**janjan_376** · 06-19-2009, 12:15 PM

Thank for your respond. Both formula from kraljb and ChemistB worked perfectly. Good job guys. Thank you very much.

I just need one more help on understanding the -1 at the last statement.What does that mean?

Thanx.

**kraljb** · 06-19-2009, 01:26 PM

The FIND function tells us how many characters in the "-" is located.

The LEFT function grabs a number of characters starting with the left most.

Since we only want things before the "-" we want the location of it -1.

Hope that helps explain it...
John

**Gayathri Naveenoa** · 07-20-2011, 07:10 AM

Hi

Please help me out.

Would want to pick only few characters in the same cell
For eg
A1 = [dsfsdjf]
[asfdjf]

i want only those characters in between special characters[] to appear in B1
i.e. dsfsdjf
asfdjf

Pls assist. Thank You