Deleting part of a cell

[Fatboy]

I have a large number of cells containing text (name of co. or
individual, varying text string length) followed by a space and an 18
character string such as this "Shaving Centers </0016000000IMo40>" - I
wold like to retain only the initial text string (ie. "Shaving
Centers" - without the quotes of course) whether the space remains is
immaterial. Problem is the </*> part is not constant, though I think
it is of uniform length. I tried using the "IF(Right(..." function but
had no success using the substitution for the numbers ie, </*>. If
unclear please LMK.

 

[Ron Rosenfeld]

I have a large number of cells containing text (name of co. or
individual, varying text string length) followed by a space and an 18
character string such as this "Shaving Centers </0016000000IMo40>" - I
wold like to retain only the initial text string (ie. "Shaving
Centers" - without the quotes of course) whether the space remains is
immaterial. Problem is the </*> part is not constant, though I think
it is of uniform length. I tried using the "IF(Right(..." function but
had no success using the substitution for the numbers ie, </*>. If
unclear please LMK.

Perhaps:

=TRIM(LEFT(A1,FIND("</",A1)-1))
--ron

 

[Dave Peterson]

Another way...

Select the range to fix
Edit|replace
what: (space character)<* (space, less than, asterisk)
with: (leave blank)
replace all