Reading data on the left of a hiphen

[wangui1981]

I need a formula that can help me separate values from the the rest.
My data has these segments '20-00-99005-00'.I need a formula that will return only '20-00-99'as this is the unique character in my data.Anyone who can help?

 

[IanWaterman]

If its always 8 characters

left(fieldname,8)

Ian

 

[Madawc]

If the first two segments vary in length, you could use SPLIT based on the hyphen, then re-join the first two and the first two characters of the third item, using LEFT.

Madawc Williams (East Anglia, UK). Using Windows XP & Crystal 10