removing superfluous information from rows; header length

[trying2excel]

I can't find the beginner's section, so I post here. Apologies.

Yes, I have searched and searched to no avail--or at least I am not aware of having found any answers for the following, and I use Windows 2000 Pro and MS Excel 2000 (9.0.2720).

Is it possible to delete specific information from each of 12,000+ rows in a column other than doing this manually, line-by-line?

I have a LONG list in Excel of registered voters which contains columns with Names, Permanent Addresses, and Birth Dates. In each row under the Permanent Address column, the abbreviation "PERM ADDR:" pre-fixes each
voter's address. I see that I could delete each "PERM ADDR:" prefix manually, but this would take countless hours to perform. I am wanting the computer to do this work for me in a very few point-and-click moves.

Also, why on Earth is the header length in Excel limited to 255 characters? Is there any way around this deficiency?

Many thanks, T2E