How to extract data from one cell to another

Question

Given a spreadsheet cell containing a string that consists of a hyphenated series of character segments, I need to extract the fourth segment.

For example, consider column A containing data strings like XX-XXX-X-G10-XX-XXX, where X denotes any character. What formula would I need to place in column B to get G10 as a result?

            A                B
1   XX-XXX-X-G10-XX-XXX      G10

I'm looking for a formula that could work in in Libre Office Calc, Open Office Calc, MS Excel, or Google Sheets.

Answer 1

One way is to use the following general-purpose macro (tested in LibreOffice):

Function SplitAndExtract(findIn As String, delims As String, _
                         Optional segment_param As Integer)
    ' findIn - string or cell to search in
    ' delims - the delimiters to split the string up by
    ' segment - which segment number to grab
    If IsMissing (segment_param) Then
        segment = 0
    Else
        segment = segment_param
    End If
    splits = Split(findIn, delims)
    If UBound(splits) < segment - 1 Then
        SplitAndExtract = "No result for that segment"
        MsgBox "No result for that segment"
         Exit Function
    Else
        SplitAndExtract = splits(segment)
    End If
End Function

Then set the cell formula to:

=SPLITANDEXTRACT(A1, "-", 3)

This is similar to my answer to your other question: https://stackoverflow.com/a/38085634/5100564. Thanks to @Ralph for suggesting the Split method.

Answer 2

It was very simple... MID was the right function:

=MID(A1;10;3)

where:

• A1 is my data
• 10 start from 10 character - in my case G
• 3 range of characters count from 10 (10, 11, 12)

Pros:

• simple

Cons:

• work only with constant strings