Delete certain characters from cells...

**amonty78** · 08-16-2011, 07:22 AM

Hi all,

Have a minor problem, any help would be appreciated.

I have download certain data from the internet. Basically, it is text with numbers next to it in brackets.
I was wondering if there was any formula or comand that I could place in the adjacent cell that would drop off or delete the brackets and numbers, leaving only the text.

I have attached a sample.

Thanks in advance for any advice / help.

**arthurbr** · 08-16-2011, 07:29 AM

If it's a one time job, try Data - Text to Columns - Delimited - Next - enter ( as Delimiter - Next - Select the 2nd column and check " do not import" - OK

**martindwilson** · 08-16-2011, 07:30 AM

in g4 =LEFT(F4,FIND("(",F4)-1)

**arthurbr** · 08-16-2011, 07:31 AM

A formula alternative =TRIM(LEFT(F4,SEARCH("(",F4)-1))

**amonty78** · 08-17-2011, 08:27 PM

Thanks guys, the formula seems to work, with one slight issue.

After I enter the formula, the adjacent cell displays the way I want it to which is great. I then copy and "paste special", then select "values" in another cell.

The problem I have is, the name in the new cell has a blank space after the text. This is causing a problem when I run a macro on the new data (run time error 13), as the base data my macro is using to search from does not have a blank cell at the end. If I go in and manually delete the blank space in the new cells, the macro works fine.

I was wondering if this was an issue because I am running Excel 2003 ??

Any help would be great !!