In the image, 'muddle' is the string containing junk words and the strings I want to extract. There is a fixed list of junk words - the good strings could be literally anything.
You can see this formula has correctly extracted "moo" and "coo", which are not in the list of junk words. The formula is below.
=LET(junkStart,FILTER(SEARCH(Table1[junkwords],Table2[muddle]),ISNUMBER(SEARCH(Table1[junkwords],Table2[muddle]))),
junkEnd,FILTER(SEARCH(Table1[junkwords],Table2[muddle])+LEN(Table1[junkwords])-1,ISNUMBER(SEARCH(Table1[junkwords],Table2[muddle])+LEN(Table1[junkwords])-1)),
goodstart,FILTER(junkEnd+1,(junkEnd+1<=LEN(Table2[muddle]))*(ISERROR(XMATCH(junkEnd+1,junkStart)))),
goodend,FILTER(junkStart-1,(junkStart-1>=LEN(1))*(ISERROR(XMATCH(junkStart-1,junkEnd))))+1,
goodchars,goodend-goodstart,
TEXTJOIN("; ",TRUE,MID(Table2[muddle],goodstart,goodchars)))
This works well, but it falls down if a junk word occurs more than once. See below.
The only difference is that 'woo' occurs twice in the second example.
I need a single cell solution. VBA is not an option for me. Using the name manager would be untidy, as would nested formulas.
I've got this far with formulas, which as far as I can tell is the furthest anyone has got with the 'removing multiple words from a cell' problem. I can see the issue - once SEARCH locates the start of a string in a cell, it doesn't go looking for a second occurrence of that string. But I don't know how to find the start of every instance of every string. Can anyone help?
REDUCE is perfect for this:
=REDUCE(Table2[muddle],Table1[junkwords],LAMBDA(m,j,SUBSTITUTE(m,j,"")))
REDUCE starts at the Table2[muddle] value as m then it substitutes the first value of Table1[junkwords] j with "" the outcome becomes the new m which will get a substitute of the second value of j. The result will be the new m, etc.
If you would want to have it comma separated it becomes more complicated, but you can realize by:
=LET(t,SUBSTITUTE(","&REDUCE(Table2[muddle],Table1[junkwords],LAMBDA(x,y,SUBSTITUTE(x,y,",")))&",",",,",","),
MID(t,2,LEN(t)-3))
This does almost the same as the previous solution, but instead of substituting for blanks it substitutes for , and substitutes all duplicate ,, for singles, so if more substitutes followed eachother it results in one comma. Also, if the first and/or last part got substituted by a single ,, then the result would have a leading and/or trailing ,. This is solved by first adding , in the front and back before substituting the double comma's for singles. the result t is then wrapped in MID, where the first and last character (both being a ,) are removed.
Alternate solution:
=LET(t,REDUCE(Table2[muddle],Table1[junkwords],LAMBDA(x,y,SUBSTITUTE(x,y," "))),
SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(t)," ",","))
Or in one go if you don't want to use LET:
=SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(REDUCE(Table2[muddle],Table1[junkwords],LAMBDA(x,y,SUBSTITUTE(x,y," "))))," ",",")
This replaces the junk words with a space. Regardless how many junk words in between words or how many trailing or leading spaces TRIM will fix it to the words separated by one space only. Substituting the spaces for comma gets to your result.
There's no single-formula solution if the junkwords list is not fixed.
Instead, you may choose to use the Substitute() function on each cell of the "Extracted Strings" column to substitute all occurances of each junk word in muddle, i.e. substitute "boo" muddle, then substitute "voo" in the resulted string, replace "noo" in the resulted string...so on. You will get the last cell.
One point to note though, you need to ensure no substring / partial strings problem in the junkwords or you need to define the rules of processing in order for the solution to be "complete". Consider the followings:
junk words = abc, def, cde
muddle = 1234abcdef5678
if you process the string in the above order, you got "12345678"
if you process the junk words in reverse order, you got "123abf5678"
I am trying to pull the date from the middle of a text string. Date is between underscores and I am not sure how to grab it. this is what my code looks like right now
=MID(K2601,FIND("_",K2601,1)+1,FIND("_",K2601,14)-FIND("_",K2601,1)-1)
but it is only pulling the well name which is not what I want.
The formula would be:
=MID(B1,SEARCH("_????-??-??_",B1,1)+1,10)
What to search: B1
Find the start using pattern.
Included beginning and ending underlines to delimit. Returns the character position so add 1 to allow for beginning _.
Use Mid to extract the date starting at value returned by Search + 1 for 10 characters.
Sample run:
I've been trying a few different ways to try and search and replace on excell to remove the last couple of characters.
For instance in one column I have product name S
I want to remove the " S" only.
I have tried some if formulas a swell and not had much luck. I'm assuming there is a simple regex that can be used for the search and replace e.g. " S/" that would just replace if its the last characters and has nothing after it.
Try using the SUBSTITUTE function and replace the letters you want to remove with a unique character/ word / space not appearing anywhere else in the booklet, depending on which part of the string you're trying to remove and what format you're trying to keep
then find and replace ( CTRL +F) that word with the black (space) character
see how to use SUBSTITUTE function here:
https://exceljet.net/excel-functions/excel-substitute-function
Since you are only interested in the end of the string, I don't think you need regex or anything too sophisticated.
If I understand correctly, you want to get the original string (product name S) up until but not including something that appears at the end (S). This means that in your example, you want the 12 leftmost digits: the digits of the original string (14) minus the digits of the pattern (2) - this would give you product name. If the original string does not end with the pattern, you want the original string.
Therefore, I suggest the following:
=IF(RIGHT("original string",LEN("pattern"))="pattern",
LEFT("original string",LEN("original string")-LEN("pattern")),
"original string")
Check these examples:
Is it possible to create any formula in excel to kick out any certain portion from a string and keep the rest? If I consider this a string Utopia(UTP), my expected output is UTP. To be specific: I would like to grab the bracketed portion and strip the rest.
These are the texts I would like to apply formula on:
Utopia(UTP)
Euphoria(EUPR)
Ecstasy(ECST)
The output I wish to have:
UTP
EUPR
ECST
FIND() will identify where a particular character first appears in a string. You can use this to find the parentheses in your text strings. Then plug those numbers into MID to extract the strings you want:
=MID(A2,FIND("(",A2)+1,FIND(")",A2)-FIND("(",A2)-1)
I'm using Excels find and replace to remove hyphens from long numbers. They are mixed between birth dates and organisation numbers that have been filled with leading zeros to have the same number of characters. There are a LOT of numbers so find and replace seems to be the simplest solution to remove the hyphens.
But when i use find and replace the leading zeros are truncated and I have not found a solution to keep them afterwards.
For example i have:
19551230-1234
01234567-8901
and after find and replace I have
1,95512E+11
12345678901
but want the format as:
195512301234
012345678901
So I want to keep the leading zeros after find and replace. I've tried formatting the cells as text, but it doesn't work as the find and replace automatically truncates the leading zero and keeps the remaining characters, so the zero is completely removed. I am using Excel 2010, but answers for several versions are appreciated.
Just put a single quote in front of your leading number - ex. '01234 It will take the number as-is literally and the quote will not show in the field.
Use the SUBSTITUTE formula instead of Find and Replace like so:
=SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ",""),"/",""),")",""),"(",""),"-","")
The result is text.