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Formula to trim text with spaces

  1. 09-07-2013, 05:16 AM #1
    nickm84
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    Formula to trim text with spaces

    Hi,

    Hoping someone can help. I have an entry in Cell A1 that reads something like "FirstName SecondName Age Colour Sport Food Hobby". This is a feed from a third party software that changes periodically. In Cell B2 I would like to put a formula in so that I only get "Food" displayed. I guess this can be achieved using some form of trim and picking up the fact that spaces separate the data in the cell. However, the "Food" length varies in length and the only way of knowing the end of that field is when there is a space after it. Here are two possible examples that may be entered in cell A1:

    A1: "Brown Bobby 30 Green Rugby Pasta Fishing"

    A1: "Peters John 20 Blue Football Pizza Archery"

    In the first example, I would want cell B2 to return "Pasta" and in the second example, I would want cell B2 to return "Pizza"

    Is it possible to do this via a formula in B2? If so, grateful if someone could kindly post such an example. This is for a really good cause.

    Many thanks,

    Nick
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  2. 09-07-2013, 05:25 AM #2
    Andy Pope
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    Re: Formula to trim text with spaces

    to extract the sixith item delimitered by spaces try this.

    =LEFT(MID(SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(A1)," ","^",5),FIND("^",SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(A1)," ","^",5))+1,LEN(A1)),FIND(" ",MID(SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(A1)," ","^",5),FIND("^",SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(A1)," ","^",5))+1,LEN(A1)))-1)

    The SUBSITUTE formula places a known character at the space before the word. The uses the FIND to locate it. The LEFT of that substring is then extracted.
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  3. 09-07-2013, 05:29 AM #3
    oeldere
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    Re: Formula to trim text with spaces

    Maybe you could use text to column.

    See the attached file.
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  4. 09-07-2013, 06:06 AM #4
    XOR LX
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    Re: Formula to trim text with spaces

    Hi,

    This - slightly shorter - formula will also extract the sixth item in a space-delimited string:

    =TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ",REPT(" ",255)),5*255,255))

    Regards
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  5. 09-07-2013, 06:45 AM #5
    Marcol
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    Re: Formula to trim text with spaces

    Quote Originally Posted by XOR LX View Post
    Hi,

    This - slightly shorter - formula will also extract the sixth item in a space-delimited string:

    =TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ",REPT(" ",255)),5*255,255))

    Regards
    I have no disagreement with this, however to allow for extra spaces in the data I would trim the source first then precede the string with a space to make the formula a litle more intuative.
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