What is left right middle exercise

Text functions are convenient to extract a part of a cell.

In the following examples, you will see in many examples how to extract a part of a cell

LEFT function

We want to extract the dialing code of cells. The dialing code is the first 3 digits of the phone number. To extract these figures, we will use the function LEFT.

This function is very simple to use because you only need 2 informations: your initial text (generally the reference of a cell) and the number of digit you want to extract (3 in this case).

Function has the following writing:

=LEFT(B2,3)

Function LEFT in Excel

Function LEFT in Excel

RIGHT function

In the same way, if you want to extract the last 4 digits of the phone number, you use this time the function RIGHTas follow:

=RIGHT(B2,4)

Function RIGHT in Excel

Function RIGHT in Excel

MID function

It is also possible to extract a part of a string in the middle. To do that, you will use MID function.

To write this function, you must

First, put the reference of the cell

Second, indicate the position where you want to start the extraction (in our example, the position 9)

Third, indicate the number of characters you want to extract (8 characters to return)

So, if you want to extract the mobile phone number of the cell B8 in the cell C8, you will write following formula:

=MID(B2,9,8)

Function MID in Excel

Function MID in Excel

In this example

20 represents the number of characters to start

8 represents the phone number (7 digits + the dash)

Create more complex extract

These 3 functions are very important to extract part of a string. But you can also work with other functions to extract more complex sub-string.

LEN counts the number of character in a string

SEARCH helps to find a specific character in a string

TRIM cleans your string of the unexpected blank

Extract text without formula

If you work with Excel 2013 or a newest version of Excel, you can extract a text without formula. This tool is the FlashFill and you can find more explanation in this article.

But the FlashFill perform the extraction on-the-fly. If your data will be refresh, the extract will not be refresh.

Explanation:

Hope this helps.

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empty space could also be a simple vacuum