Need to find a particular sequence in a sentence

Hello All,

The objective is to look for a particular sequence in a sentence of every cell and if the sequence matches, then to pull that value.

For Eg.

I want to look for XXXX-YYYY, where and Y are all digits, may be same or different like 2341-3241. So whenever such sequence is found in a sentence, it must be able to pull out that sequence and paste it in another column.

if the sentence is as below:

Heater sequence 4543-2343 is to be rectified, then 4543-2343 is to be extracted out and copied into another cell, in same row.

Please help on this.

THank You,
Bharat

Hi Dibbins,

Thanks for responding.

Sequence can be anything of numbers, like if there are '4 digits' and then - and then '4-digits' like 4312-1414, then that should be identified as sequence. So basically I can say it will be a 9 letter word, in which mid letter is "-" and rest all are digits. So if there is such a 9 letter word in a sentence, it needs to be identified and picked from the sentence

Originally Posted by humdingaling

is X all digits as well?
how do you want to pull the data?

you want to use a UDF or macro?

Yeah, X will all be digits. I will need a macro. I don't mind using a UDF
I have many such sequences, I thought I can develop if I can get the initial one. My another sequence would be word with 8 characters, first character as "alphabet", rest 7 are digits. I hope I can figure out my other requirement needs if I can get for 1 sequence.

Oh god..you have really given an awesome simple solution. Thanks a lot

Originally Posted by humdingaling

the pattern is sometimes fiddly to figure out but since the syntax is all in place its only a matter of searching for the right pattern

the link in post #3 is a good start but if that is not enough just google "Regular expression VBA Excel"

Your code has solved my requirement. Really a lot thankful. Shall follow the above link too.