The formula(s) doesn't work in excel installed on a certain computer

**yaxo** · 11-04-2018, 02:48 PM

I've got the following formula to extract a substring before the hyphen character (-) from cell A2:

=LEFT(A2, SEARCH("-",A2)-1)

extract-text-before-char.png

-If I enter the same formula and text string as shown in the picture above in Google Sheets, it works fine as expected.
-If I enter the same formula in Excel file where Office 365 is installed on my work computer, it works fine as well.

*Error: If I enter the same formula where Office 365 is installed on my personal computer, I'm getting a warning message as shown in the picture below:

ghjgh.png

As you may see in my formula, the highlighted cell A2 is not recognized by Excel.

P.S.
If I try to enter a simple formula like '=SUM(A3+A4)', it works as expected.
I'm only getting errors by entering more complex formulas like:

=RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-SEARCH("-",A2))
=MID(A2, SEARCH("-",A2) + 1, SEARCH("-",A2,SEARCH("-",A2)+1) - SEARCH("-",A2) - 1)
=SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(B3,"color_new",C3),"color_old",D3),"level",A3)

Does anyone know the reason of this issue?

Thanks in advance!

**Pete_UK** · 11-04-2018, 02:53 PM

Perhaps your personal computer has regional settings which are not English, so Excel is expecting semicolons instead of commas. Look at the help box below your formula - it shows the syntax of the formula with semicolons.

Hope this helps.

Pete

**BadlySpelledBuoy** · 11-04-2018, 02:54 PM

What are the results of you entering =LEFT(A2,4) into a cell and =SEARCH("-",A2)-1 into another cell?

BSB

**LeoSkywalker** · 11-04-2018, 03:04 PM

As you can see in the image that you posted, the formula helper is clearly expecting a semicolon to separate the arguments.
Change all commas to semicolons in your formulas, or change the number format settings in the PC.