Raj,

They might be extended ascii characters, if you are copying from, say, a website. Could you just
use

=MID(A1,2,len(A1))

HTH,
Bernie
MS Excel MVP


"Raj" wrote in message
...
Hi,

I am having two strings with different first characters. One looks
looks like a pair of "L"s and the other a solid vertical block. Both
these characters are at the beginning of the string. When the code
function is run both return the value 63. However, when I run
substitute(a1,char(63),"") the character is not subsituted with "".
Char(63) incidentally looks like a question mark..

How do I clean these characters which return char(63) but do not
respond to the substitute function on them?

Thanks in advance for all the help.

Regards,
Raj