MID Function in Excel (Table of Contents)
MID in Excel
MID function in excel is a part of text function. MID function is useful when you want to return a specified number of characters of the text.
In simple words, MID Function is used to extract a small part of the string from the input string or return a required number of characters from text or string.
For Example:
MID (“Bangalore is the Capital of Karnataka”, 18, 7) in this formula MID function will return from the 18th character it will return 7 characters i.e. “Capital”.
MID function is also available in VBA too. We will discuss that at the end of this article.
MID Formula in Excel
Below is the MID Formula in Excel:
Explanation of MID Formula in Excel
MID formula has three compulsory parameters: i.e.text, start_num, num_chars.
- text: From the text that you want to extract specified characters.
- start_num: Starting position of the middle string.
- [num_chars]: The number of characters you want to extract from the start-num.
Usually, MID function in Excel is used alongside other text function like SEARCH, REPLACE, LEN, FIND, LEFT etc…
How to Use MID Function in Excel?
MID function in Excel is very simple and easy to use. Let understand the working of MID function in Excel by some MID Formula example.
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MID function can be used as a worksheet function and as VBA function.
Example #1
In this MID Formula in Excel example, we are extracting the substring from the given text string by using the MID formula.
From the above table extract, characters from 4th character extract 6 characters.
So the Result will be :
Example #2
Using MID function we can extract First Name & Last Name. Look at the below example where we have full names from A2 to A15.
From the above table extract first names for all the names.
Result is :
Part 1: This part determines the desired text that you want to extract the characters.
Part 2: This determines the starting position of the character.
Part 3: SEARCH function looks for the first space (“ “) in the text and determines the placing of the space.
Here the SEARCH formula returns 5 for the first name that means space is the 5th character in the above text. So now MID function extracts 5 characters starting from 1st.
So the Result will be :
Note: Space is also considered as one character.
Example #3
Below is the flight number list and we need to extract the characters starting from Y till you find “ – “
Look at the above example where the letters are in bold we need to extract. Looks one heck of a task, Isn’t it?
However, we can do this by using MID alongside SEARCH or FIND functions.
One common thing is all the bold letters are starting with Y and it has 6 characters in total.
A SEARCH function will determine the starting character to extract and from the starting point, we need to extract 6 characters.
So the Result is :
Example #4
Below is the list of companies alongside their registration number. The task is to extract only the registration number from the list.
Closely look at the above list one common thing before the registration number is the word Acct. This will be our key point to determine the starting point. In the previous example, we have used SEARCH this time we will look at the FIND function.
Part 1: This part determines the desired text that you want to extract the characters.
Part 2: FIND function first looks for the word “Acct” in the text and from there we need to add 5 more characters to the list and that determine the starting position of the character.
The reason we need to add 5 is that from Acct to registration number it is 5 characters including space.
Part 3: Number of characters we need to extract.
So the Result will be :
Example #5
Now we will look at the combination of RIGHT, LEFT & MID function in one example. We need to concatenate forward slash (/) to separate Year, month & the day.
Look at the below example where we have dates but no separators for a year, month and day.
Now, we need to insert separators for the year, month, and day.
Firstly RIGHT function extracts 2 characters from the right and inserts one forward slash (/) i.e. 25/
Now, we need to insert separators for the year, month, and day.
The second part is MID function extracts 2 characters starting from the 5th character and insert one forward slash (/)
i.e. 25/10/
The final part is LEFT function extracts 4 characters from the left-hand side and insert one forward slash (/)
i.e. 25/10/2018
So the Result will be :
VBA Code to use MID Function
Like in Excel, we can use MID function in VBA code also. Below code illustrates the usage of the MID function in VBA macros.
Sub MID_Function_Example Dim Middle_String as string Middle_String = Mid (“Excel can do wonders”, 14, 7) Msgbox Middle_String End Sub
If you run the above code message box will display wonders as your result.
Things to remember about the MID Function in Excel
- Number formatting is not part of a string and will not be extracted or counted.
- This is designed to extract the characters from any side of a specified text.
- If the user does not specify the last parameter, it will take 0 as by default.
- Num_chars must be greater than or equal to zero. If it is a negative number, it will throw the error as #VALUE.
- In the case of complex data sets, you need to use other text functions like SEARCH, FIND Num_chars parameter.
- Use the MID function when you want to extract text from inside a text string, based on location and length.
- MID function returns empty text if the start_num is greater than the length of a string.
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