Remove text from cell(s) leaving only certain text?

[solved, see post by martindwilson for solution with vlookups]

Hi, bit of a random one I'm not entirely sure what to call..

Basically, I have a spreadsheet of work orders which is an export from an online database. It has many columns but the one I'm looking at is called "Internal Log" wherein notes are written by staff members. Work orders are given job codes depending on the type of work to be done (ACXX for aircon, FANX for fans, FABX for cabin fabric etc. specially designed to be words/ text that won't appear anywhere else). I am trying to create a pie chart of how the jobs break down into these codes and managed to do this by individually going through each cell in the Internal Log column (for 689 work orders..) and manually removing all the text except for the job code. As I have now been asked to make this a weekly activity I am wondering whether there is an easier way to do it than manually removing information..

A cell would contain something like this "31/7/13 Go and fix a faulty aircon system. ACXX. 1/2/13 job passed to engineer. 2/2/13 engineer en route.. etc. etc." the job code would be randomly somewhere within all the text, sometimes at the start, sometimes in the middle or at the end..

I was wondering if there was an easier way than removing the text I don't want in the cell as you can't make a pie chart based on the fact the cell has the word ACXX somewhere in it, the cell needs to contain only the word ACXX, right? I don't expect there's an Excel function to do this, but I was wondering whether there might just be a macro (or maybe a vlookup?) you could use?

I'm using Excel 2010, don't have a spreadsheet to attach but if it'll help I can knock up a phoney one?


Many thanks in advance,
A temp whose told his boss he's a wiz with Excel, then realised the company uses Office 2010 D:

Sample file please...

I've done searches on keywords, if you use the filter function you can use text filters to filter on key words, equals... or begins with or contains etc.

you can combine lookup with search
eg with your text in a2 and a list in e1:e3 of
ACXX
FANX
FABX
then
=LOOKUP(2^15,SEARCH($E$1:$E$3,A2),$E$1:$E$3)

should do ,see attached