How to extract part of text string from cell in Excel?

This tutorial shows the methods on extract substring from left, middle or right of a cell, and also explain how to extract text before or after a specific character as below screenshots shown. Extract substring from left, mid or right Extract substring after or before a specified character Method A: formula   Method B: handy tool Extract substring between two characters Method A: formula   Method B: a handy addin tool Extract E-mail address from a string Extract numeric or alphabetical characters from string Download sample file Other Operations (Articles) Related To Spaces Extract nth character from string  Extract time from datetime So on..

In Excel, there are some formulas can help you to quickly extract part of text.

Extract first n characters

Supposing you want to extract first 3 characters from a given list data, please select a blank cell that you want to place the extracted result, then use this formula

B3 is the cell you extract characters from, 3 is the number of characters you want to extract.

Press Enter key to get the extracted result. Then drag fill handle over the cells to apply this formula.

Extract last n characters

For example, extract last 6 characters from a list of string, please select a blank cell that you want to place the extracted result and use this formula:

B9 is the cell you extract characters from, 6 is the number of characters you want to extract.

Press Enter key to get the extracted result. Then drag fill handle over the cells to apply this formula.

Extract n characters form middle

If you want to extract 3 characters begin from the 4th character of a string, you can use below formula:

B15 is the cell you extract characters from, 4 represent extract characters from 4th character (count from left), 3 is the number of characters you want to extract.

Press Enter key to get the extracted result. Then drag fill handle over the cells to apply this formula.

Extract text string before, after or between characters without formula

Here is a tool - Extract Text in Kutools for Excel can  help you quickly and easily extract strings before, after or between characters as you need. Click for 30-day free trial with 300 add-ins!

If you want to extract substring after or before a specified character, you can apply one of below methods to handle the job.

Method A: Extract substring after or before a defined character by using formula

Supposing you want to extract characters after the character “-” from a list of strings, please use this formula:

B3 is the cell you want to extract characters from, - is the character you want to extract string after.

Press Enter key to get the extracted result. Then drag fill handle over the cells to apply this formula.

If you want to extract substring before a defined character, you can use the formula like this:

Example result is shown as below:

Method B: Extract substring after or before a defined character by Kutools for Excel

For directly extract substring after or before a specified character, you can use the Extract Text utility of Kutools for Excel, which can help you to extract all characters after or before a character, also can extract specific length of characters before or after a character.

Before using the Extract Text utility, please take 3 minutes to free install Kutools for Excel: Free Download Now!

1. Select the cells that you want to extract characters, click Kutools > Text > Extract Text.

2. In the popping Extract Text dialog, enter *: into Text textbox, then click Add to add this criterion to Extract list.

The wildcard * indicates any length of strings, ? indicate anyone character. In this case, *: represents to extract all characters (including colon mark :) before colon mark from selected cells.

3. Click Ok, a dialog pops out, select a cell to place the extracted text.

4. Click OK, then the substring in each which before colon mark (including colon mark) has been extracted at cell.

Tip

• If you want to extract all characters after colon character, type :* into the Text textbox in Extract Text dialog.
  
• If you want to extract only two characters before colon mark, type ??: into the Text textbox in the Extract Text dialog.
  

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Maybe in some cases, you need to extract substring between two characters, you can choose one of below methods to handle the job.

Method A: Extract by formula

Supposing to extract characters between brackets () from a given list, you can use below formula:

In the formula, B3 is the cell that you want to extract string from, ( and ) are the two characters you want to extract string between.

Press Enter key to get the extracted result. Then drag fill handle over the cells to apply this formula.

Method B: Extract by Kutools for Excel

The Extract Text utility of Kutools for Excel also can do you a favor on this operation.

Before using the Extract Text utility, please take 3 minutes to free install Kutools for Excel: Free Download Now!

1. Select the cells that you want to extract substring between characters, click Kutools > Text > Extract Text.

2. In the Extract Text dialog, enter (*) to the Text textbox, click Add button to add this criterion to the Extract list.

The asterisk mark * indicates any length of string, if you want to extract specific length of character, you can use the question mark ? to indicate anyone character. Here, (*) represents to extract all characters between (), including ().

3. Click Ok to select a cell to place the extracted result, then click OK.

Now the substring between brackets has been extracted.

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If you want to extract e-mail address from a given string or a range of cells, you can use the Extract Email Address function to handle this job at once time instead of finding them one by one.

Before using the Extract Email Address utility, please take 3 minutes to free install Kutools for Excel: Free Download Now!

1. Select the cells that will be extracted email address, then click Kutools > Text > Extract Email Address.

2. Then a dialog pops out for you selecting a cell to output the address emails.

3. Click OK, the email addresses in each cell have been extracted.

If there is a list of data mixed numeric and alphabetical and special characters, you just want to extract the numbers or alphabetical values, you can try Kutools for Excel’s Remove Characters utility.

1. Before you using the Remove Characters utility, you need to have a copy of the data as below screenshot shown:

2. Then select this copy of data, click Kutools > Text > Remove Characters.

3. In the Remove Characters dialog, check Non-numeric option, click Ok.

Now only the numeric characters have been left.

To extract alphabetical values only, check Non-alpha option in the Remove Characters dialog.

Click to download this sample file

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