This Excel tutorial explains how to use Excel MID Function to extract substring from a string, and use with FIND and SEARCH and LEN Function.
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Excel MID Function
MID Function is quite similar to LEFT Function and RIGHT Function, where RIGHT Function extracts a substring on the right, LEFT Function extracts a substring on the left, while MID extracts a substring in the middle of the string.
MID Function is commonly used with FIND Function or Search Function, both of them are used to return the position of a substring (In VBA, use INSTR Function). For example, I want to extract the last name of a person (Gilbert) from the full name (Peter, Gilbert), which is separated by a comma. First thing I need to do is to locate the position of the comma using FIND or SEARCH Function, and then extract the last name with MID Function (see the below example).
Syntax of Excel MID Function
MID( text, start_position, number_of_characters )
| text | The text string from which you want to extract the characters |
| start_position | The position of the first character you want to extract. Positions start at 1. |
|
number_of_character |
The number of characters to return. |
Example of Excel MID Function
| Formula | Result | Explanation |
| =MID(“Access Excel.Tips”,1,6) | Access | Extract substring from position 1 to 6 |
| =MID(“Peter,Gilbert”,1,FIND(“,”,”Peter,Gilbert”,1)-1) | Peter | Extract substring from position 1 to (comma position-1) |
| =MID(“Peter,Gilbert”,FIND(“,”,”Peter,Gilbert”,1)+1,LEN(“Peter,Gilbert”)) | Gilbert | Extract substring from (comma position+1) to (length of whole string) |
Outbound References
http://www.techonthenet.com/excel/formulas/mid.php