"Harlan Grove" wrote in message
oups.com...
someone wrote...
Probably didn't make myself very clear on original post.

The preceding text could be anything except "S3" or "S4"

All the strings are of unequal length.

Simpler (if longer) then.

=LEFT(MID(x,SEARCH("S3",SUBSTITUTE(x,"S4","S3")),1 024),
FIND(".",MID(x,SEARCH("S3",SUBSTITUTE(x,"S4","S3") ),1024))-1)


BRILLIANT !

Thank You

:-)