Help with useful Excel find functions

You will use the Excel find functions to return characters from a string. You have the Left, Mid and Right Excel find functions that can be used for this purpose.

The Left and Right Excel find functions are simple enough. They return the first number of characters or the last number of characters from a string, depending on the one used.

The problem normally comes in when you have to extract characters from the middle of a string. For this purpose you will use the Mid function. For the Mid function to work you will need a starting point and the total number of characters to return. If you know how many characters you want to extract from a string you will have little or no problem with the Mid function. What if you don’t know where the starting point is or how many characters to extract?

If you have something to identify the sub-string you will benefit from using the Mid function. You can use the FIND to get the start point. If you for instance, have strings of different lengths with one consistency - that of the hyphen, you can use the hyphen as your starting point. You will then create a formula to return the total number of characters you want after the hyphen. The FIND will become the first argument. It will thus look like this:

=FIND(start_ point_ to _find, source)

=FIND(“-“,Cell) which will then return a value for instance, a value of 4 when the hyphen appears in the fourth position of the specific string.