Hans,

Thanks for the clue re separators.

I changed the format to YYYYMMDD.
Then =TEXT(A1;"YYYYMMDD")

That successfully gave me the string in General format, but when I
tried to separate the components using LEFT and RIGHT the cell still
behaved like a date field.

This problem was solved by converting from General To Text.

Thanks for your help.

Tony Maguire
Melbourne Australia


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