Separation Anxiety!

[insanalyst]

I have a WB where column A contains stocks and stock symbols. The stock symbols represent the last 1-4 letters in each cell. Because each stock name (and symbol) is of different length and may or may not have multiple spaces, the traditional means of "reverse contatenation" aren't helping (e.g. text to columns, =RIGHT(text,FIND(" ",text)), etc.) any ideas? WB is several thousand rows long so a clean solution is preferred. perhaps a way to make the FIND function return the last space in the text?

 

[Trouttrap2]

Are you trying to extract the last 4 characters, but not include the spaces?
Could you provide an example of your data and the expected outcome.

 

[insanalyst]

I am trying to extract the stock symbol. It could be anywhere from 1-4 letters long depending on the symbol. I can trim spaces if necessary. here is an example:
<TABLE style="WIDTH: 213pt; BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse" border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=284><COLGROUP><COL style="WIDTH: 213pt; mso-width-source: userset; mso-width-alt: 10386" width=284><TBODY><TR style="HEIGHT: 15pt" height=20><TD style="BORDER-BOTTOM: #ece9d8; BORDER-LEFT: #ece9d8; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent; WIDTH: 213pt; HEIGHT: 15pt; BORDER-TOP: #ece9d8; BORDER-RIGHT: #ece9d8" id=td_post_251209 height=20 width=284><TABLE style="WIDTH: 213pt; BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse" border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=284><COLGROUP><COL style="WIDTH: 213pt; mso-width-source: userset; mso-width-alt: 10386" width=284><TBODY><TR style="HEIGHT: 15pt" height=20><TD style="BORDER-BOTTOM: #ece9d8; BORDER-LEFT: #ece9d8; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent; WIDTH: 213pt; HEIGHT: 15pt; BORDER-TOP: #ece9d8; BORDER-RIGHT: #ece9d8" id=td_post_251209 height=20 width=284>AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES IN A</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
ALLSCRIPTS HEALTHCARE MDRX
</TD></TR><TR style="HEIGHT: 15pt" height=20><TD style="BORDER-BOTTOM: #ece9d8; BORDER-LEFT: #ece9d8; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent; HEIGHT: 15pt; BORDER-TOP: #ece9d8; BORDER-RIGHT: #ece9d8" height=20>ALPHA NATURAL RESOURCES ANR</TD></TR><TR style="HEIGHT: 15pt" height=20><TD style="BORDER-BOTTOM: #ece9d8; BORDER-LEFT: #ece9d8; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent; HEIGHT: 15pt; BORDER-TOP: #ece9d8; BORDER-RIGHT: #ece9d8" height=20>ALTERA CORP ALTR</TD></TR><TR style="HEIGHT: 15pt" height=20><TD style="BORDER-BOTTOM: #ece9d8; BORDER-LEFT: #ece9d8; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent; HEIGHT: 15pt; BORDER-TOP: #ece9d8; BORDER-RIGHT: #ece9d8" height=20>ALTRIA GROUP INC MO</TD></TR><TR style="HEIGHT: 15pt" height=20><TD style="BORDER-BOTTOM: #ece9d8; BORDER-LEFT: #ece9d8; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent; HEIGHT: 15pt; BORDER-TOP: #ece9d8; BORDER-RIGHT: #ece9d8" height=20>AMAZON COM INC AMZN</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

In all cases the characters after the last space represent the stock symbol

 

[chirp]

you can use this formula:

=RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-FIND("*",SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","*",LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","")))))

or this function:

Public Function getLastWord(ByVal str As String, _
                            Optional tst As Boolean) As String

Dim funcTst As Boolean, lenStr As Long, ndx As Long
tst = False
On Error GoTo exitFunc

str = RTrim$(str)
lenStr = Len(str)
ndx = InStrRev(str, Chr(32))

getLastWord = Mid$(str, ndx + 1, lenStr - ndx)
tst = True
exitFunc:
End Function

 

[insanalyst]

Chirp, this worked like a charm, thankyou. Just familiarizing myself with LEN. This worked so smoothly

 

[c_m_s_jr]

Another alternative:

=TRIM(RIGHT(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ",REPT(" ",100)),4))