How to pull keywords from an excel cell - excel

Question

I work in sourcing and I'm trying to look through a list of cells that contain part numbers and their description, but only pull the part number from the cell and place it in another column.
The part numbers have one of 10 possible prefixes (i.e. ABC, DDA, GHF, AH, etc.). The cells may look something like this:
Tire Pressure ABC123873 Monitor
Oil Life ABC849999999021 gauge
Air conditioner GHF211 maintenance
And I want to be able to search that entire list and only pull the following information into another column:
ABC123873
ABC849999999021
GHF211
As you can see from above, the challenge is that the part numbers are all different lengths and have no particular convention to them. The only thing you know about them is that they can have one of ten possible prefixes as I mentioned above (ABC, GHF, etc.).
The current solution I have looks something like this:
C2=FIND("ABC", A2)
D2=FIND(" ", A2, C2)
E2=MID(A2, C2, D2)
Where cell A2 contains the complete part number and description, C2 finds the beginning location of the part number by searching for its prefix, D2 finds the ending location of the part number by searching for a space, and then E2 pulls the substring between those two locations.
As you can see, this isn't a very robust solution and it only allows me to search for parts that start with ABC. I want to be able to search for all 10 possible prefixes (ABC, DDA, GHF, AH, etc.) but that does not work. I tried the approach below:
C2=FIND({"ABC", "DDA", "GHF", "AH"}, A2)
But that only searches for the ABC parts and disregards the other prefixes. Any help you all can offer will be greatly appreciated!!

Answer 1

This is how I would do it. I created a list of prefixes to search in column G. You could even put them on a separate page to keep it cleaner.
=MID(A1,FIND(G1:G2,A1,1),FIND(" ", A1, FIND(G1:G2, A1, 1))-FIND(G1:G2,A1,1))
I only tested two prefixes but just change G1:G2 to G1:G10 and put all you prefixes in them. The formula looks in A1. The first FIND finds the beginning character number. The rest of the equation is calculating the end of the product number minus the beginning which returns the amount of characters to return. Its important to know that MID isn't wanting the beginning and end character. It wants the beginning character and the number of characters after that to return. So FIND(" ", FIND(G1:G2, A1, 1)) does not work as it returns too many characters. Give it a try.
Oh and don't forget to do Ctrl+Shift+Enter to enter the array formula
The VBA answer would be
Sub findProductCode()
' Variable Declarations
Dim productName As String
Dim productArray() As String
Dim wordCount As Integer
' Sets the active sheet to use
' Change Sheet1 to the name of your sheet
With Sheets("Sheet1")
' Selects the first cell to check
' Change A1 to the first cell with data
Range("A1").Select
' Loops through all rows until an empty row
' It will end if you have any empty rows in the midle of data
Do Until IsEmpty(ActiveCell)
' Reads text out of the cell
'Change A to the proper column
productName = Range("A" & ActiveCell.Row).Text
' Splits the string into individual words
productArray = Split(productName, " ")
' Loops through array to find the product number
For wordCount = LBound(productArray) To UBound(productArray)
' Check if the word has the desired 10 prefixes
' Add more Or Left(productArray(wordCount), 3) = "xxx" until you have 10 of your prefixes you need
If Left(productArray(wordCount), 3) = "ABC" Or Left(productArray(wordCount), 3) = "GHF" Then
' Sends the product number to its cell
' Change B to the correct destination Cell
Range("B" & ActiveCell.Row).Value = productArray(wordCount)
End If
Next
' Increments the active cell to the next cell down
ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).Select
Loop
End With
End Sub
If you don't know how, you need to enable the developer tab in excel. File->Options->Customize Ribbon Add the Developer to the Ribbon. The save your worksheet as .xlsm It is the macro enabled workbook. Then go to the developer tab, Choose "Visual Basic" and double click "ThisWorkBook". Paste the code in. You can run the code from there for a one time deal or you can create a button on the sheet that you can run this macro whenever you want.
To add a button, go back to the sheet you want the button on. On the developer tab select Insert and choose the first form control Button. Draw the button on your sheet and a dialog box will appear. select the findProductCode macro and select OK. Now every time you click the button it will run the macro.

Answer 2

This isn't the prettiest formula, but it should get you on your way. There's definitely a VBA solution, if you're interested in a macro instead of a formula.
Assuming your Tire Pressure ABC123873 Monitor is in A1, enter this into B1:
=MID(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ",";",1)," ","-",1),SEARCH("ABC",SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ",";",1)," ","-",1)),SEARCH(" ",SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ",";",1)," ","-",1))-SEARCH("ABC",SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ",";",1)," ","-",1)))
How it works, is it takes your A1, and first uses Substitute. I substitute the first and second [space] for ; and -. (Note, if there are more spaces than two, this will run into issues). Then, I just use Mid to extract the part of the cell starting with ABC and going until it hits the space. If you don't have "ABC" starting the values you want, you need to adjust the Search("ABC"... part (or use an array there). I am still working on it, but hopefully this helps give an idea.