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How to find and extract maximal / minimal string based on alphabetic order in Excel?

Author: Xiaoyang Last Modified: 2024-08-12

Normally, we always find and extract the largest or smallest number in a list of numbers, but, have you ever tried to get the largest or smallest string based on alphabetic order in Excel? This article, I will introduce some formulas for dealing with this job.

Find and extract maximal or minimal string based on alphabetic order with formulas

Find and extract maximal or minimal string based on alphabetic order with formulas

The following formulas can help you to get the largest or smallest alphabetic string, please do as this:

Find the maximal string based on alphabetic order:

Please enter this formula: =INDEX(A2:A15,MATCH(0,COUNTIF(A2:A15,">"&A2:A15),)) into a blank cell where you want to get the largest string, and then press Ctrl + Shift + Enter keys together, and you will get the maximal alphabetic string as following screenshot shown:

a screenshot showing how to use the formula to find the maximal string based on alphabetic order

Find the minimal string based on alphabetic order:

In this section, please enter this formula: =INDEX(A2:A15,MATCH(0,COUNTIF(A2:A15,"<"&A2:A15),)) into a blank cell where you need to locate the result, and then press Ctrl + Shift + Enter keys together, now, the smallest value based on alphabetic order has been displayed at once, see screenshot:

a screenshot showing how to use the formula to find the minimal string based on alphabetic order

Note: In the above formulas, A2:A15 is the data list that you want to use.

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