Excel Field Parse Hel - excel

Question

We work with very complicated filenames for the data we work on. I will X out the parts of the file name that aren't relevant. What makes this tricky is that some "pieces" of the file name can vary in length and sometimes possess operator error.
XXXX_M222.222_080816_015457MST_XXXX_XXXX.XX
Now I will break these three fields down for better understanding:
M222.2222 will always start with an M followed by a variable string of numbers to annotate the frequency in MHz.
080816 is just the date, will always look like this
015457MST is the time we took the survey, or when the "ping" hits. It can vary in regards to the seconds will be dropped off. 01 (hour) 54 (min) 57 (sec). This will always end in MST.
I would like to take these three fields and parse them into three separate fields in Excel.

Answer 1

I got bored and decided to write it for you. This will handle all in a specified range. It removes the M and the MST and the end of each line and moves the broken down sub strings off net to the original line.
Feel free to upvote and mark as answered when youre satisfied with the end result
edit
if you got bored you could actually figure out a way to actually make the date and time stamp into a usuable format instead of the god awful output thats its in now.
Private Sub derpy()
Dim vAr As String
Dim vAr2 As String
Dim rArray() As String
Dim rNg As Range
Dim rCell As Range
Dim count As Integer
Set rNg = ThisWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1").Range("A1:A7")
count = 1
For Each rCell In rNg.Cells
vAr = rCell
vAr2 = Mid(vAr, InStr(vAr, "M") + 1, InStr(vAr, "MST") - InStr(vAr, "M") - 1)
rArray = Split(vAr2, "_")
newDate = newDate & Left(rArray(1), 2) & "/"
newDate = newDate & Mid(rArray(1), 3, 2) & "/"
newDate = newDate & Mid(rArray(1), 5, 2)
newDate = Format(newDate, "mm-dd-yyyy")
newDate = newDate & "-" & Left(rArray(2), 2) & "."
newDate = newDate & Mid(rArray(2), 3, 2) & "."
newDate = newDate & Mid(rArray(2), 5, 2)
newDate = Format(newDate, "mm-dd-yyyy hh-mm-ss")
rCell.Offset(0, 1).Value = newDate
newDate = ""
Next rCell
End Sub

Answer 2

Here's a nice quick way of parsing a string that has a common delimiter in excel. You can feed in your file name and it will pick out the three parts you want without any ugly loops and if statements.
Sub parseFileName(filename As String)
Dim freq As String
Dim fDate As String
Dim fTime As String
freq = Split(filename, "_")(1)
fDate = Split(filename, "_")(2)
fTime = Split(filename, "_")(3)
Debug.Print freq, fDate, fTime
End Sub
Called from the immediate window:
parsefileName "XXXX_M222.222_080816_015457MST_XXXX_XXXX.XX"
M222.222 080816 015457MST
So... the magic is really in the SPLIT() function which takes in a string and a delimiter and "splits" the string into an array. Instead of storing the array in an array variable, we just treat the SPLIT() function itself as the array and use the values after the Split() function (1), (2), and (3) which is the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th tokens in the string to pull the values through. It's super quick and it doesn't matter how long each token is since we are delimiting by a character.
Editing to add an example of Split() while iterating over a column of data:
If you have a list of these filenames in Column A (Rows 1 through 5) of Sheet1, you could write out these three tokens into Column B, C, and D using the following.
Sub parseFileNames(filename As String)
'Declare a range object to hold the cell that we are splitting
Dim rngCell As Range
For Each rngCell In Sheet.Range("A1:A5").Cells
'Using offset here to move over 1, 2, and 3 columns, respectively
' from the cell that we are splitting.
rngCell.Offset(0, 1).Value = Split(rngCell.Value, "_")(1)
rngCell.Offset(0, 2).Value = Split(rngCell.Value, "_")(2)
rngCell.Offset(0, 3).Value = Split(rngCell.Value, "_")(3)
Next rngCell
End Sub