Extract string to the left of 2 special characters

[astephan]

I have a field [ITEM_ID] and I want to pull out everything to the left from the second special character.



Example:
S42024-L5005-A3-8
S42024-L5100-A100-G1

Return:
S42024-L5005-A3
S42024-L5100-A100

The [ITEM_ID] field varies in the number of characters between each "-".

[CJ_London]

please clarify - your example is pulling everything from the left of third special character.

or do you mean everything to the left of the last '-'

[astephan]

everything to the left of the last '-'

[rpeare]

left([Item_ID], len([Item_ID]) - instrrev([Item_ID], "-"))

[CJ_London]

or just

left(itemid,instrrev(itemid,"-")-1)