That is because the cell holds a number, it is just formatted as you show
it, the - is not real.

If you want the year, just use

=YEAR(A1)

--
HTH

Bob Phillips

(replace somewhere in email address with gmail if mailing direct)

"hui" wrote in message
...
I set A1="1978-9-22", B1="find("-",A1)" and return, but B1 shows #VALUE!,
why? How can I resolve it? thanks in advance.

A B C
1 1978-9-22 =find("-",A1)
2
3


hui