Error .... but why?

[ChrisEngland]

Hi,

Hope someone out there can help. I keep getting an error message but I don't understand why.

I have a formula is cell B3 which is =IF(FIND("",A3,1),MID(A3,4,99),A3)

Cells in column A will contain a string which starts with xx\ or just yyyyyyyy

What I was hoping the formula would do was if the contents of the cell contained a \ would simply put from char position 4 to the end of the string into cells B3, if not it would copy cell A3 to B3

What I'm getting is correct is there is a \ in cell A3 but if not I get a #Value ! error

If I simply type =A3 into B3 excel does just that and copies contents of A3 into B3

What's going wrong?

TIA

Chris

 

[Special-K99]

FIND implies the text to search for WILL be in the searched cell, if it's not there you'll get an error

=IF(ISNUMBER(FIND("",A3)),MID(A3,4,99),A3)

 

[shg]

Aren't you looking for a backslash?

=IF(ISNUMBER(FIND("\",A3)), ...

 

[Scott Huish]

Based on your description, if the \ was present in the string it would be the 3rd character, so why not just look for that?

=IF(MID(A3,3,1)="\",MID(A3,4,99),A3)