Identifying the presence of a randomly ordered text string in a cell

[AG]

Hi All,

I am facing a challenge where I need to do certain computations based
on text that is entered by the users manually. There is a series of
cells in one column containing user narrative. In those narratives
users put a code, such as, "ABC" and their comment and also a date.
Please see the below examples:

ABC to be chased 03 SEP 09
To be analyzed ABC John 3SEP09
ABC Amended Ross 03/SEP/09
etc.

The date mentioned in the above cells can be anything and user enters
them in their own chosen formats as shown above. I need to count all
the cells that contain the text string "ABC" and a particular date, 03
SEP 09 in this case. The string ABC can appear anywhere in the cell
and the date can also appear anywhere. Plus the users choose their own
format to enter the dates.

One of the ways is to advise the users to enter the narrative in a pre-
defined format but right now I have a challenge where I need to
analyze 1000s of rows containing such narratives. Can anyone help me
on this?

 

[Shane Devenshire]

To do this you will need to tell us all possible ways the dates could be
entered since some of the ones you are showing us are not Excel legal dates?

 

[AG]

Hi,
thanks for your reply. None of the date formats that I am going to get
in the narratives will be excel date formats as they always appear in
the middle or end of a text string. The possible ways I can think of
right now are as below:
03 Sep 09
3 Sep 09
03Sep09
3Sep09
3/Sep/09
03/Sep/09

those are the formats I have noticed as entered by the users.