First off want to thank all of you who provided info.
Pete, your formula gives me just the last 3 digits, which
is not exactly what I need.
BOB couldn't make your formula work.
DAVID- your formula worked like a charm. So went with one
of yours.
I was close, but never thought about the Trim function.

So thanks again to all of you.

Have a good holiday weekend.
Juan

-----Original Message-----
Hi Juan,
in A1: either of these. The first checks for the
string "-E3"
the second just checks for two hyphens.

=IF(RIGHT(TRIM(A1),3)="-E3",A1,"(blank)")
=IF(LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"-",""))= 2,A1,"(blank)")

An alternative would be Conditional Formatting, where you
would colorize the item in Column A
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/condfmt.htm

Select Column A (or the entire sheet with Ctrl+A),
with cell A1 as the active cell
format, Conditional Formatting
formula is: =AND(NOT(ISBLANK($A1)),RIGHT(TRIM($A1),3)
<"-E3")

But if someone pastes content into the cell they will
likely
wipe out the conditional formatting for that cell.
--
---
HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel [site changed
Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages:
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page:
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm

"JUAN" wrote in message
...
Hello,
trying to find a formula. I have the following:
COLUMN A
TEST-T1
TEST-TI-E3
I would like to put in Column B the word BLANK or
something if the part does not contain the ending of -
E3,
but if it contains the -E3, then put that part there.
Here's what should look like
COLUMN A COLUMN B
TEST-T1 BLANK
TEST-TI-E3 TEST-TI-E3
basically if part in Column A doesn't have the -E3, then
in B put blank but if a part includes that then put that
part
Please provide any help.
Thank you,
Juan


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