Technically, the task boils down to working out the positions of two spaces in the original string, and you can have it done in this way: Taking the previous example further, if besides first and last names cell A2 also contains a middle name, how do you extract it? How to get substring between 2 delimiters Finally, the TRIM function removes extra spaces, and you get the following result: Instead of LEN, you can put a number that represents the longest surname you expect to find, for example 100. So, in the num_chars argument, you simply supply the total length of the original string returned by the LEN function. There is no need for us to calculate the end position exactly (as you remember, if start_num and num_chars combined is bigger than the total string length, all remaining characters are returned). To extract the last name from A2, use this formula:Īgain, you use the SEARCH function to determine the starting position (a space). And then, you use the MID function to return a substring beginning with the fist character and up to the character preceding the space, thus fetching the first name. The SEARCH function is used to scan the original string for the space character (" ") and return its position, from which you subtract 1 to avoid trailing spaces. A1 website download exclude files full#MID formula to get the first nameĪssuming the full name is in cell A2, first and last names separated with a space character, you can pull the first name using this formula: But as is often the case in Excel, the same thing can be done in a variety of ways. A1 website download exclude files how to#If you've had a chance to read our recent tutorials, you already know how to pull the first name using the LEFT function and get the last name with the RIGHT function. When dealing with real-life tasks in Excel, you will most often need to use MID in combination with other functions as demonstrated in the following examples. If the sum of start_num and num_chars exceeds the total length of the original string, the Excel MID function returns a substring starting from start_num and up to the last character.If num_chars is equal to 0, it outputs an empty string (blank cell). If num_chars is less than 0 (negative number), a Mid formula returns the #VALUE! error.If start_num is less than 1, a Mid formula returns the #VALUE! error.If start_num is greater than the overall length of the original text, an Excel Mid formula returns an empty string ("").To convert an output into a number, use MID in combination with the VALUE function as shown in this example. This may be critical if you wish to use the result of your Mid formula within other calculations. The MID function always returns a text string, even if the extracted substring contains only digits.And remembering the following simple facts will keep you safe from most common errors. The result might look something similar to this:ĥ things you should know about Excel MID functionĪs you have just seen, there's no rocket science in using the MID function in Excel. Num_chars is the number of characters to extract.įor example, to pull 7 characters from the text string in A2, starting with the 8 th character, use this formula:.Start_num is the position of the first character that you want to extract.
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