Remove 'n' number of characters from the end of a string

[simpleminded]

I have a column in excel the content of which are something like this:

Column

COI ValueA 11.2.0.4.0 06-JUL-2015 13:00:01

ICT WAK RGTT ValueB 3.2.0.4.0 02-APR-2012 13:57:42

As you can see above there is some data followed by a timestamp. I would like to remove this timestamp.

Output:

Column

COI ValueA 

ICT WAK RGTT ValueB

Options available in data cleansing tool does not allow me to specify the number of characters I want to trim, same applies for formula tool I cannot specify the number of characters that I want to remove.

Please help. Thanks.

[JohnJPS · Accepted solution]

You could do a Formula with something like:

Left([FieldName], Length([FieldName]) - 21)

... effectively removing 21 characters, including the 20 for the full date-time timestamp, plus the preceding space.  This assumes a consistent 20 characters for the timestamp.

[jdunkerley79]

I'd probably do @JohnJPS answer but as an alternative you can use a REGEX_Replace:

REGEX_Replace([Column],"^(.*) ([0-9\.]+) (.{20}$)","$1")

This will get the part before the version number.

If you use a Regex tool in parse mode with the 

^(.*) ([0-9\.]+) (.{20}$)

expression you can break it into three fields: Name, Version, TimeStamp

[ferngl2000]

Thanks - great and easy solve.  Creative!

[jacob_kahn]

Thank you! This was very helpful!