On Sat, 23 Jun 2007 05:20:00 -0700, Jonathan Horvath
wrote:

Yeah, that's the difficulty...

here are some different examples:

Name unique-ID unique-return
umts_r5.667.1 umts umts
gsm_r5.234.1.a gsm gsm
gsm_ra8.234.1 ra ajar
gsm_6.234.ezx ezx ezx

when i use the equation you provided, it returns gsm for anything that
begins with gsm... so the last 3 return gsm and not the appropriate return.

thanks!

Jonathan

Your examples are even more complicated to deal with, in that it appears that
there can be multiple unique_ID's in the string to be searched; and the
required unique_ID may be located anywhere within the string!

You will need some rules to determine which unique_ID you want returned when
multiple possible unique_ID's are present within the string.

The rules might include, for example, prioritizing the unique_ID's. They may
depend, in part, on position; on whether the unique_ID is embedded within other
numbers/letters or has some clear sort of separations (e.g. ".", "_", or
start/end of string); and so forth.

Once you develop these rules, they should be able to be implemented in Excel
(or more likely, in VBA).
--ron