Extract all text strings after a specific text string

**jomili** · 05-02-2011, 02:50 PM

I'm compiling a cheat sheet of formulas for my office workers to use. When I get to the Text functions, I can find examples of how to do just about everything except extract text before/after a particular string. I've found a few formulas for doing it after a symbol, but they don't work when it comes to a string.

For example, say I have 15 paragraphs that all begin with "Yo mamma's so ugly that..." and I want to extract whatever follows after "that". Or, say I have 1000 lines of text formatted

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and I want to extract everything after the 4th character string (HERD in this example), or before the 4th string. Is there a way to do that in a formula that can adapted to any situation?

Your help in augmenting my knowledge is already greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
John

**martindwilson** · 05-02-2011, 03:13 PM

for after with phrase entered in a1 key phrase/word in b1
=TRIM(MID(A1,SEARCH(B1,A1)+LEN(B1),255)
and for before
=TRIM(LEFT(A1,SEARCH(B1,A1)-1))

**jomili** · 05-02-2011, 03:21 PM

Martin,

You are a wizard and I thank you. Your two formulas are easy to use and easy to adapt to changing situations. But there's still one piece I need; if I don't know the phrase, but I do know it's position (2nd word in the string, or 4th, whatever) how would I use that in the formulas you've presented?

And, in case I didn't make it clear, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for the formulas you've provided so far!

**martindwilson** · 05-02-2011, 04:58 PM

to get everything from word n where b1 contains the number of word
=MID(A1,FIND("~",SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","~",B1-1))+1,255) is the nth word onwards
before the nth word
=LEFT(A1,FIND("~",SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","~",B1-1))-1)
and before and inc nth word
=LEFT(A1,FIND("~",SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","~",B1))-1)

**snb** · 05-02-2011, 05:09 PM

or in VBA
the second word in each cell (result in column B)

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the third word in each cell

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the text before the second word:

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the text after the second word:

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**jomili** · 05-03-2011, 09:35 AM

My Sweet Lord! All I wanted was a simple formula, and got that in spades, and equivalent VBA procedures to boot. ALL of this stuff is going into my toolbox. Martin and SNB I can't thank you enough. I think with the addition of these tools there's not much with text that I'm not going to be able to do.

THANK YOU, thank you, THANK YOU, Thank You, THANK YOU!