Oh! I misunderstood; yesterday you wrote which I took to mean you had that part licked. Sorry, you must have been wondering what I was talking about.

Yes, you absolutely should not have to do it a piece at a time. But most people do just that, because figuring out how to use formulae or VBA just looks like too much work. "Oh, it's just this one time", they tell themselves, and settle down to spend a couple days doing it by hand.

Others spend the same couple of days, or even longer, figuring out something that'll do it automatically. That may seem like a waste of time, but a) it's more fun that way (if you're that type), and b) in the process you learn a few things; the next time that kind of task comes up you'll be able to do it in a few hours instead of a few days.

What I'm leading up to is that if you don't already know how to approach this, from my clues about FIND and MID functions and what you already know, then learning how to do it is going to take a while, maybe longer than doing hundreds of these things by hand. Me, I think it's worth it, and I'll coach you. But if you don't want to learn—if you're already thinking "can't I just do it, instead of all this blah-blah about long-run advantages?"—then probably you'll get it done faster by just buckling down to do it by hand, instead of allowing me to drag you unwillingly into a learning situation, and then quitting in disgust partway into it and going back to do it by hand anyway.

From things you've said so far, I'm convinced you can do it; I just don't want to waste your time if you don't want to. Shall we try?

If so, maybe we should switch to email. This'll take a little back-and-forth, and I can put explanatory screen shots in email. I'm at rhbridg _at_ attglobal.net, if you want to do that.