
We'll assume that the first value is in A1 and the second string is in A2. Our example strings are wilson.12345 and tennyson.4523.Let's work with an example where we have two text strings of different lengths, and we need to write a formula that will work with both of them. Examples of the FIND() function in action. The FIND function can help you calculate this, which means you can write LEFT, RIGHT or MID functions that work with text strings of different lengths and components. the number of characters to extract) or, in the case of the MID() function, you don't know the start_num (where to start extracting text from). The FIND function is very useful in the above functions if you don't know the num_chars (i.e. This would return 123 as the result these are the three characters in the string "wilson12345", starting from the 7th character in the string.In the previous example, you might enter this formula: The MID function is similar to the LEFT function, except you can specify which point in the text string from which to start extracting text. The MID() function has the following syntax: the first character) in the cell (A5 in this example). the 6 characters taken from a starting point of the left-most value (i.e. The value shown in the third cell is the result of the formula, i.e.Click on a cell and enter the LEFT() function:.To use the LEFT() function, follow these steps: The LEFT() function works by taking the specified number of characters starting from the left end of the text value entered. The LEFT() function has the following syntax: This means that the result of the formula in this example can be used in other numerical calculations within your Excel spreadsheet.Note that in this example, the result of the RIGHT() formula, 12345, is a number and will be treated as such by Excel.the last character) in the cell (A3 in this example). the five characters taken from a starting point of the right-most value (i.e. Enter the two arguments for the function as shown in the following example:.Click on a cell and enter the RIGHT() function:.To use the RIGHT() function, follow these steps: Example of the RIGHT() function in action The RIGHT() function works by taking the specified number of characters starting from the right end of the text value entered. The RIGHT() function has the following syntax: You may also need to use the LEN() function, which calculates the length of a value in a cell. To do this, you can use one of the text manipulation functions available in Excel. For example, you may have a cell that contains a combination of text and numbers, or a cell that contains two numbers separated by a delimiter such as a comma. Sometimes it is useful (or necessary) to extract part of a cell into another cell in Excel.
