Formula to return characters in a cell before a specific character

[sarlo00]

I have a field that is not a fixed length. It contains characters before and after a colon (":") (including spaces). I need to eliminate all of the characters after the ":" and just return the characters and spaces before the ":". The number of characters before the ":" varies (or I would just use Left()). Would someone please help me with a formula to return only the characters before the ":"?
Thank you.

 

[Richard Schollar]

Hi

You can use Left:

=LEFT(A1,FIND(":",A1&":")-1)

 

[sarlo00]

Thank you! I feel kinda dumb because that is a very simple formula. I just could not remember how to identify a spacific character. Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to my banal post.

 

[Bayesatthemoon]

Really useful, shame you're Inactive, would like to ask another question