Roger,
tx a lot. let me look into it and i'll post here again.

And to everyone posting in this thread, i do very much appreciate ur
help and patience.

Roger Govier wrote:
Hi Stef

I couldn't get the array of values with Countif to work, but with B1
containing

=RIGHT(A1,SUM(COUNTIF(A1,"*firm")*4+
COUNTIF(A1,"*llc")*3)+COUNTIF(A1,"*company")*7
+COUNTIF(A1,"*partnership")*11)

and C1 containing
=SUBSTITUTE(A1,B1,"")
It seemed to give the answers you were looking for.