Extracting Text Between Characters In Excel

 

MID(cell, SEARCH(char1, cell) + 1, SEARCH(char2, cell) - SEARCH(char1, cell) - 1)

The formula MID(cell, SEARCH(char, cell) +1, SEARCH(char, cell, SEARCH(char, cell) +1) - SEARCH(char, cell) -1) is used in spreadsheet programs like Excel or Google Sheets to extract a portion of text from a cell.

The formula takes three inputs:

1. The first input, "cell", is the reference to the cell that contains the text you want to extract a portion of.
2. The second input, "char", is the character or substring that marks the beginning of the text that you want to extract.
3. The third input is a series of functions that work together to find the ending character or substring of the text you want to extract.

Here's a breakdown of what the third input is doing:

• SEARCH(char, cell) finds the first occurrence of the character or substring "char" within the text in the "cell" reference.
• SEARCH(char, cell, SEARCH(char, cell) +1) finds the next occurrence of "char" in the text, starting from the character immediately following the first occurrence. This is done by providing a second argument to the SEARCH function, which is the position in the text to start the search from.
• The two SEARCH functions are subtracted from each other to determine the number of characters between the first and second occurrences of "char".
• The +1 after the first SEARCH function moves the starting position of the MID function one character to the right of the first occurrence of "char".

Putting it all together, the MID function takes a portion of the text from "cell", starting from one character after the first occurrence of "char", and ending one character before the second occurrence of "char". This effectively extracts the text between the two occurrences of "char".