Extract a data pattern (character combo may change but not the pattern) from a cell

Paste this code into a new module:

Private regex As Object
Public Function ExtractPattern(sourceString As String, patternString As String, Optional group As Variant) As String

Dim mc As Object

If regex Is Nothing Then Set regex = CreateObject("VBScript.RegExp")
With regex
    .IgnoreCase = True
    .Global = True
    .Pattern = patternString
    If .Test(sourceString) Then
        Set mc = .Execute(sourceString)
        If IsMissing(group) Then
            ExtractPattern = mc.Item(0).Value
        Else
            If mc.Item(0).SubMatches.Count < group Then
                ExtractPattern = mc.Item(0).Value
            Else
                ExtractPattern = mc.Item(0).SubMatches(group - 1)
            End If
        End If
    Else
        ExtractPattern = ""
    End If
End With

End Function

Then you can use, for example, the following formula to extract the pattern:

=ExtractPattern($A1,"([^0-9a-z]|^)([0-9a-z]{5}-[0-9a-z]{5}-[0-9a-z]{5}-[0-9a-z]{5})([^0-9a-z]|$)",2)

WBD

Arrgh! My eyes are too old; I didn't see there were 6 x's in each group. You *could* therefore use this:

=ExtractPattern($A1,"([^0-9a-z]|^)([0-9a-z]{6}-[0-9a-z]{6}-[0-9a-z]{6}-[0-9a-z]{6})([^0-9a-z]|$)",2)

Note that this pattern *insists* that there isn't an extra matching character at the beginning/end of the matched string.

WBD