I have seen how to count the number of occurances of a particular character,
but is there a way to limit the count to just the left most characters? here
is my example

....PLATE - WELD, TAPPED, .312 - 18

i want to count only the left most "." in this case, it would be 3. If I
use the

=LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,".","") i get 4 because of the . in the .312.

any help would be appreciated.

thanks