Finding the last occurrence of specific character in a cell

[kmeunier]

I have a column of data that has a product number within each cell. The product # contains at least one hyphen, but possibly more. My goal is to locate the last hyphen in each cell and break the data into two parts. Everything after the last hyphen (including the hyphen) should be moved to a cell in a newly created column on the right.

Example of valid products codes:
Column1
123-EA1
BGF33201-R-GR-BX10

How can I do this so that I end up with

123 in column1 and -EA1 in column2
and
BGF33201-R-GR in column1 and -BX10 in column2?

Thank you in advance for any suggestions you can provide me!
Kathy M. - Richmond, VA

 

[Oaktree]

With three steps:

1) B1 =SUBSTITUTE(A1,"-","@",LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"-",""))), copied down where @ is some character that will not appear in your data. (This will replace the last - with @)

2) Copy and paste values of column B

3) use data --> text to columns to break column B out with @ (from step 1) as a delimiter

 

[barry houdini]

If your data is in A2 you could use this formula in B2

=LEFT(A2,LOOKUP(15^2,FIND("-",A2,ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&LEN(A2)))))-1)

and this in C2

=SUBSTITUTE(A2,B2,"")

 

[Oaktree]

If your data is in A2 you could use this formula in B2

=LEFT(A2,LOOKUP(15^2,FIND("-",A2,ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&LEN(A2)))))-1)

and this in C2

=SUBSTITUTE(A2,B2,"")

nice.

 

[Anthony47]

Hallo to everybody,
who is so kind to explain me WHY and HOW the wonderful formula posted by barry houdini works (the one in B2)?

Thank you!