Find & Mid

The text functions of Excel are functions that are often overlooked by users.  However, these functions can be of great use.  Let’s take a look a few of these text functions.  Open the Workers database.

You will notice in this database that column A contains names.  A typical entry has a last name, first name.  

If your goal is to isolate the last name, and then the first name you will need a function that will differentiate between the two.  The function that you will use in this instance is the find function.

Skill Builder:  Using the Find Function

1.	Click 	In the Cell where you want your random number to be 
		generated.

2.	Type	The Function.  In this case the function is 
		
		=find(“,”,A2,1)

		The above equation is interpreted to mean that you 
		would like to use the find function to first locate the 
		comma (“,”), second to locate the comma in a certain 
		cell (A2) and finally to look for the comma in a certain 
		position within the cell (1).

3.  	Press	Enter.  When you press Enter, a number will appear.  
		This number indicates the number of the character where 
		comma is located within the cell.
	
Note:  When using functions, if you would like to see the parameters that must be included in a function, after typing the left parenthesis, press Ctrl+Shift+A.  The parameters will appear after the parenthesis.

Another widely used text function is the mid function.  The mid function has 3 parameters.  These parameters basically indicate where you are looking (cell address), the start number, or number from which you wish to begin extracting data, and finally, the number of characters you wish to copy.  Thus when using the mid function you will type (for example_

=mid(A2,B2+2,20)

This equation indicates that you are looking beginning in cell A2, that you wish to start extracting data from 2 character positions past the comma in cell A2 and that you wish to be able to extract up to 20 characters.  When you hit Enter, the name of the person in the list will appear.