So the equivalent in Excel is:

=IF(Type1="RFS",

IF(Type2="RFS",

IF(Type3="RFS",

...

The "Type" fields contain various categories in a 3 number/figure format.

I'm looking for the first Type field where "RFS" does NOT appear.

When it finds this first occurance, I want to...

A-ha! That's a nice solution.

Perfect... Thank you. Think I will explore STUFF a little more - hadn't seen or used it before (early days!). Quite useful for manipulating text streams...

Thanks...

Thanks Chris, there is one extra spanner in the works, the date in the text string if there is a single character day number, only returns 1 digit, not two.

so:...