How to return the first instance of a specific name in body of text, paragraph, etc

[cph020283]

I am using excel to search the body of text to find the the name of the person who most recently replied in an email thread. In some cases the thread may have responses from multiple people. This would mean extracting the most recent name in the text which would appear towards the top.

Currently I've been using IFS() to search the body of text for a predetermined list of names. However, IFS() evaluates the conditionals sequentially and may return a TRUE result for the first match it finds, not necessarily the most recently mentioned.

In the example file, I have included 3 rows of examples with random bodies of HTML text, with the table of names to the right. The 'NAME' column is where the first appearance of any of the names would be returned.

[WideBoyDixon]

If I can have a helper column with this formula:

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Then I could perhaps use this:

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If I can't have a helper column then it's pretty ugly:

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See attached.

WBD

[cph020283]

That was quick. Brilliant! And was a learning experience for me too as dividing out by the helper column helped me understand how you came up with that. Totally can apply the principles used here in the future. Thank you!!! I love this forum.