If you want to stay in Excel, you can likely do this with Powershell, which supports regex.

Thanks,

Cary


On Jul 2, 2013, at 8:02 AM, "Harper, Cynthia" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Is there a way to return (in Excel, if possible) the largest 4-digit number (by word boundaries) in a string?  I've extracted the 863 fields from Millennium for my active periodicals, and want to find the latest year in each run.  I'm willing to estimate it by taking the largest 4-digit number in the string. I'm doing this in Excel.  Any help?
> 
> Cindy Harper
> Electronic Services and Serials Librarian
> Virginia Theological Seminary
> 3737 Seminary Road
> Alexandria VA 22304
> 703-461-1794
> [log in to unmask]