There are numerous occasions when we need to split a string into pieces. Depending on the type of string that we are handling we can do it using many different techniques. Here I’m going to show you one way of doing a simple string split. On column A we have the strings that we want to split. We want to get the text that is before the “,” character into column B.
So in column B we can put the following formula:
=TRIM(LEFT(A1,FIND(",",A1)-1))
Here I use 3 Excel functions: TRIM(), to remove the spaces on the beginning and on the end of the string that we get; LEFT() to get the string to the left of the “splitter”, in this case is the , character and FIND() to find the position of the “splitter” character. I remove 1 from the position that FIND() returns so that I don’t get the “,” character.
In column C we can put the following formula to the the text that is on the right of the “,” character:
=TRIM(RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-FIND(",",A1)))
Here, instead of the LEFT() function, I use the RIGHT() because I want to get the text on the right of the “splitter” character. I use the LEN() function to get the number of character that the string on column A has so that I can subtract the position where the FIND() function finds the “splitter” character. This way I get the number of characters for the function RIGHT() to return, counting from the end of the string in column A. Example: the string in cell A1 has a LEN(A1) of 25 characters. The “splitter” character is found on position 9 of the string. So my formula will return on cell C1 (25-9)=16 characters counting from the right of string in cell A1, the result will be “2nd Street 2009”.
