Remove text appearing between two characters - multiple instances - Excel - excel

Question

In Microsoft Excel file, I have a text in rows that appears like this:
1. Rc8 {[%emt 0:00:05]} Rxc8 {[%emt 0:00:01]} 2. Rxc8 {[%emt 0:00:01]} Qxc8 {} 3. Qe7# 1-0
I need to remove any text appearing within the flower brackets { and }, including the brackets themselves.
In the above example, there are three instances of such flower brackets. But some rows might have more than that.
I tried =MID(LEFT(A2,FIND("}",A2)-1),FIND("{",A2)+1,LEN(A2))
This outputs to: {[%emt 0:00:05]}. As you see this is the very first instance of text between those flower brackets.
And if we use this to within SUBSTITUTE like this: =SUBSTITUTE(A2,MID(LEFT(A2,FIND("}",A2)),FIND("{",A2),LEN(A2)),"")
I get an output like this:
1. Rc8 Rxc8 {[%emt 0:00:01]} 2. Rxc8 {[%emt 0:00:01]} Qxc8 {} 3. Qe7# 1-0
If you have noticed, only one instance is removed. How do I make it work for all instances? thanks.

Answer 1

Highlight everything
Go to replace
enter {*} in text to replace
leave replace with blank
This should replace all flower brackets and anything in between them

Answer 2

It is not that easy without VBA, but there is still a way.
Either (as suggested by yu_ominae) just use a formula like this and auto-fill it:
=IFERROR(SUBSTITUTE(A2,MID(LEFT(A2,FIND("}",A2)),FIND("{",A2),LEN(A2)),""),A2)
Another way would be iterative calculations (go to options -> formulas -> check the "enable iterative calculations" button)
To do it now in one cell, you need 1 helper-cell (for my example we will use C1) and the use a formula like this in B2 and auto-fill down:
=IF($C$1,A2,IFERROR(SUBSTITUTE(B2,MID(LEFT(B2,FIND("}",B2)),FIND("{",B2),LEN(B2)),""),B2))
Put "1" in C1 and all formulas in B:B will show the values of A:A. Now go to C1 and hit the del-key several times (you will see the "{}"-parts disappearing) till all looks like you want it.
EDIT: To do it via VBA but without regex you can simply put this into a module:
Public Function DELBRC(ByVal str As String) As String
While InStr(str, "{") > 0 And InStr(str, "}") > InStr(str, "{")
str = Left(str, InStr(str, "{") - 1) & Mid(str, InStr(str, "}") + 1)
Wend
DELBRC = Trim(str)
End Function
and then in the worksheet directly use:
=DELBRC(A2)
If you still have any questions, just ask ;)

Answer 3

Try a user defined function. In VBA create a reference to "Microsoft VBScript Regular Expressions 5.5. Then add this code in a module.
Function RemoveTags(ByVal Value As String) As String
Dim rx As New RegExp
rx.Global = True
rx.Pattern = " ?{.*?}"
RemoveTags = Trim(rx.Replace(Value, ""))
End Function
On the worksheet in the cell enter: =RemoveTags(A1) or whatever the address is where you want to remove text.
If you want to test it in VBA:
Sub test()
Dim a As String
a = "Rc8 {[%emt 0:00:05]} Rxc8 {[%emt 0:00:01]}"
Debug.Print RemoveTags(a)
End Sub
Outputs "Rc8 Rxc8"