Hi Mike,
This should remove doubled hyphens in place (macro solution),
as well as prefixed and suffixed hyphens for TEXT value
within a selected range.    Will ignore numbers like -7.
TRIM which removes spaces will be performed on all text cells
that contain at least one hyphen within the selected area.
Prior to XL97  xlCellTypeConstants might be xlConstants

Option Explicit

Sub REMXHYPS()
  'David McRitchie 2000-02-27  excel.programming
  'hyphen removals of dups, prefixed, suffixed, and trim results
  Application.ScreenUpdating = False
  Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual   'pre XL97 xlManual
      Dim newstr As String
      Dim oldstr As String
      Dim lst As String
      Dim ix As Integer
      Dim x As String
      Dim cell As Range
  For Each cell In Selection.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeConstants, 2)
    'above limits to constants which are TEXT
    If InStr(1, cell.Value, "-") Then
      lst = "-"
      newstr = ""
      oldstr = Trim(cell.Value)
      For ix = 1 To Len(oldstr)
        x = Mid(oldstr, ix, 1)
        If x = "-" Then
          If lst <> "-" Then newstr = newstr & x
        Else
          newstr = newstr & x
        End If
        lst = Mid(oldstr, ix, 1)
      Next
      If Right(newstr, 1) = "-" Then newstr = Left(newstr, Len(newstr) - 1)
      cell.Value = Trim(newstr)
    End If
   Next
  Application.Calculation = xlCalculationAutomatic  'pre XL97 xlAutomatic
  Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

HTH,
David McRitchie,  Microsoft MVP - Excel
My Excel Pages:  http://members.aol.com/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm

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