How to remove characters between Cell values in Microsoft Excel

**Limitless** · 25-01-2012

I have a column of cells that have excess data which needs to be removed. The #of characters vary. I'm needing a formula to delete all the characters that precede the 2nd hyphen as well as delete the 2nd hyphen. Ex. [ABC-12345-12345]. I need the cell to read [12345]. Can anyone provide a formula that can remove this data.

**Leanne** · 25-01-2012

Presuming your data in A1 down looks like this: ABC-12345-12344, ABC-12345-12355, etc. In B1: =MID(A1,SEARCH("-",A1,SEARCH("-",A1)+1)+1,99)+0

Copy down to return the numbers after the 2nd hyphen as real numbers, which can be : 12344, 12355, etc,

**QUENBY** · 25-01-2012

Assuming that your brackets [ ] are not really part of the value, then:=MID(A1,FIND(CHAR(1),SUBSTITUTE(A1,"-",CHAR(1),2))+1,255) will return everything after the 2nd hyphen. If you always want to keep the characters after the last (no matter how many) hyphen and you don't have to use a formula, you could use: Select the range to fix edit > replace what: *- (asterisk, hyphen) with: (leave blank) and click on replace all.