Did you look at the LIKE operator as I suggested.

If you were looking for something more powerful why have a subject like:

"Look instr for specific string types"

And then say:

No reason to keep your question a secret - go ahead and say what you want.

If you want to do regular expressions, here is some information previously
posted by Harlan Grove:

=====< extract from a posting by Harlan Grove >=====

I had given an implied warning that I might elaborate on the strictly
worksheet functions above. It's possible to use VBScript regular expressions
in Excel VBA, even under Excel 97. [VBScript 5 regular expressions can be
accessed directly by Excel 2000/VBA 6, but Excel 97/VBA 5 can't find them.
Please see Robert Bruce's reply to my posting in
microsoft.public.excel.programming under the subject 'How to Reference
VBScript Regular Expressions' for some details.]

Here's a url describing regular expressions:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/languages/clinic/scripting051099.asp

Here's a link to Microsoft's top scripting page:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/

If you have Internet Explorer 5 installed, you should have the VBScript 5
runtime.

Getting back to the point, using Robert Bruce's suggestion on using late
binding it's possible for Excel 97 to use VBScript regular expressions. They
can be wrapped inside VBA user-defined functions. Here's an example of a
rough equivalent to perl's s/// operator though with syntax closer to awk's
[g]sub().

Function psub(matchpat As String, replacepat As String, s As String,
Optional re_global As Boolean = True) As String
    Dim regex As Object
    Set regex = CreateObject("VBScript.RegExp")
    regex.Pattern = matchpat
    regex.Global = re_global
    psub = regex.Replace(s, replacepat)
End Function

An example of how it could be used:  =psub("[a-zA-Z]","",string)

Part #: ABC123-456X5B32    ->     #: 123-456532
R102C1:R107C2                      ->    1021:1072
WK 555-1212                            ->     555-1212
234-5678PG                              ->    234-5678

It could be used as a more powerful find & replace. Here's an example of
changing just subcomponents of formulas matching '=', name or cell address,
'+', name or cell address, '/', name or cell address by making the first and
third name or cell address the arguments to myfunc() and otherfunc(),
respectively.

=psub("=(\w+)\+(\w+)/(\w+)","=myfunc($1)+$2/otherfunc($3)",C1)

=A1+A2/A11            ->    =myfunc(A1)+A2/otherfunc(A11)
=A4/A5/A14             ->    =A4/A5/A14
=A7+A8+A17           ->    =A7+A8+A17
=A9+A10/A19=0     ->    =myfunc(A9)+A10/otherfunc(A19)=0
=A10+A11/A20       ->    =myfunc(A10)+A11/otherfunc(A20)

And here's another user-defined function that returns either the number of
pattern matches in a string (optional parameter = 0) or an array containing
the position and length of the n_th pattern match in a string (optional
parameter = n). This is roughly similar to awk's match().

Function pmatch(s As String, matchpat As String, Optional matchnum As Byte =
1) As Variant
    Dim rval(1 To 3) As Variant, matchcollection As Object, regex As Object
    Set regex = CreateObject("vbscript.RegExp")
    regex.Pattern = matchpat
    regex.Global = True
    Set matchcollection = regex.Execute(s)
    If matchnum = 0 Then
        pmatch = matchcollection.Count
    ElseIf matchnum <= matchcollection.Count Then
        rval(1) = matchcollection.Item(matchnum).FirstIndex
        rval(2) = matchcollection.Item(matchnum).Length
        rval(3) = matchcollection.Item(matchnum).Value
        pmatch = rval
    Else
        pmatch = CVErr(xlErrNum)
    End If
End Function

=======< end of previous posting >=====

Regards,
Tom Ogilvy

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