FIND returning #VALUE! error

Nola111

Board Regular
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
119
The string in cell A1 is:

Code:
Multi-Specialty - 12254

If I put this formula in B1:

Code:
FIND("-", A1)

It returns 6.

But if I do:

Code:
FIND(" - ",A1)

I get a #VALUE ! error.

Why can't it find that string of space-hyphen-space when FIND can normally find any string of characters? How would I do a FIND for space-hyphen-space?
 
Last edited:

Excel Facts

Last used cell?
Press Ctrl+End to move to what Excel thinks is the last used cell.
It maybe that the spaces are not "normal" spaces. Try
=FIND(" - ",SUBSTITUTE(A1,CHAR(160)," "))
 
Upvote 0
are those hardspaces from a download, maybe a different acsii code
 
Upvote 0
It works fine for me. What that tells me is that the spaces around the "-" are probably not regular spaces, but probably special spaces (like non-breaking spaces).
I often see that with data that is downloaded from the Web or comes from other sources.

Assuming that space before the hyphen is in space 16 (as per your example), you can see exactly what is in the space with the following formula:
Code:
=CODE(MID(A1,16,1))
This returns the ASCII code for the value in the 16th space. Then you can use an ASCII table to see what that is: http://www.asciitable.com/
A regular space should return "32". If it returns anything else, it is not a typical space.
 
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