Nigel

Try the InStr() function

InStr(1,"Nick Hodge","o")

returns 7

--
HTH
Nick Hodge
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Southampton, England
HIS

"Nigel Bennett" wrote in message
...
I am looking for a locate function, WHat I need to do is
find the length of a string up to the first instance of
particular character and determine how many characters are
before it, then use that result in a left statement

something like

x=length(string,locate("-"))
left(string,x)