Microsoft Excel is one of the most powerful tools that exist and that will allow you to make various calculations, records, graphs, among others. It has many applications that you can use , however, to achieve this goal you must know and know how to apply the formulas and functions in Excel to facilitate calculations.
Likewise, when you have many records and you want to work with them, it will be useful to know how to extract numbers and data from a cell in Excel . Continue and we’ll show you how to do it.
How to Extract Numbers and Data from a Cell and its Variants in Excel
Index( )
- What is the relationship between the If Function and the ‘Extract’ Function in Excel?
- What is the logic of the ‘Find’ function?
- Items to search
- Cell position to find the numbers
- When is it necessary to use the ‘If.Error’ function?
- How do you change values with errors?
- Substitution
- MIN function
- How to extract data from an Excel cell?
- Alphanumeric data
- Numerics
- formulas
- What is the ‘Quick Fill’ tool for?
- How to get specific data?
- Left, Right Functions
- Data at the beginning and at the end
- Why is it not possible to apply a single formula to extract numbers and letters?
What is the relationship between the If Function and the ‘Extract’ Function in Excel?
There are many functions in Excel that are related to each other , that is, they have similar purposes. You will see many cases of similarities without them doing exactly the same task.
In the case of the “If” functions and the “Extract” function, you can see that the first is a conditional function that examines the fulfillment of a relationship between numbers or data contained in cells or references.
On the other hand, the second function “Extract” is used in order to extract a part of the content of a cell according to the conditions indicated in its structure.
It is possible to establish a relationship between both resources because the “If” function can be used to verify the fulfillment of a condition and if it is positive, use “Extract” to obtain the data sought.
What is the logic of the ‘Find’ function?
All the functions have an algorithm that is based on a logic to guarantee the fulfillment of the assigned task, in the case of the “Find” function, its objective is to locate data or numbers in the indicated cell addresses .
You must provide part of the character string you are looking for and indicate where Excel will perform the search. Here are the most relevant aspects of this function:
Items to search
You must provide the content or part of the content that you are looking for in the function, for this you must fill in the corresponding space. It is typically the first part of the function where you will place the content you are looking for. In the syntax you will see it as the “search text” .
Cell position to find the numbers
In the function you will find as part of the argument or operating syntax that you must place the cell that corresponds to the search , it is known as “Inside the text” and you can indicate with a cell, or with the text marked in quotes where you want to process the value.
The “Find” function will return as a result a number that corresponds to the position where the text or character string indicated in the search was located.
When is it necessary to use the ‘If.Error’ function?
One of the functions that can help you the most is “If.Error” , since it is a conditional formula that evaluates if, when applying a calculation, it is correct, or if, on the contrary, the result is an error. If the calculation process and the variables involved are correct, the result will be the function or formula itself , that is, an established value.
If the function evaluates to a failed result, then you’ll see an error message appear depending on the settings you set in the function syntax. So you should use this resource if you need to correctly evaluate the application of the formulas , which will allow you to obtain even the type of error in case it occurs.
Sometimes you can have a large amount of data that comes from a source such as text files, so in principle the text or data file must be imported into Excel , and error problems can occur that can be solved using the function “Yes. Error.”
How do you change values with errors?
It is common to get errors when using Excel spreadsheets, and when these occur you will see #Value in the cells. You could find some variant depending on the version of Office you use. In this case, you can use different resources to change these representations:
Substitution
You can make substitutions in the cells where the indicated nomenclature appears, for this you will have several resources, some more complex than others. The manual change is an option , although it will be very tedious to use this resource if you have hundreds or thousands of cells with this condition. We recommend using “Ctrl+B” to find and replace values of your choice.
In addition, you can use the “If.Error” function and put a text or value that you can process in later analysis of cells with other formulas or functions. So you will not lack resources to make the substitutions you need.
MIN function
You cannot use this function directly to make changes in the cells that throw an error, since it needs a number to evaluate the logical condition and search for the minimum value of a range of values. To make changes to cells with an error with this formula you will need an additional function that transforms the error into a number.
How to extract data from an Excel cell?
There are several ways to extract data from an Excel cell, but first you must differentiate between the types of data that each cell contains. Numbers, alphanumeric characters and formulas are typical contents that you will find in the cells of a spreadsheet:
Alphanumeric data
As you already know, data of this nature contains text and numbers . The Extract function will be very helpful to obtain data from a cell that contains these types of characters.
You can use the combination of functions such as “If”, to evaluate the fulfillment of a condition, “Find” to determine in what position the searched text is located within a cell, and finally join all the previous ones to obtain good results.
For example, if you want to extract a specific length of alphanumeric data use ” =Extract(A2; 3, 3)” with this we tell Excel to extract from cell A2, from position 3, the three characters that follow.
Numerics
To extract numerical values you will have several tools available from the easiest to the most complex. The choice will depend on the structure of the alphanumeric data presented in the cells, if the data is presented randomly you will have to use nested array formulas or formulas that do not involve arrays, but must be nested anyway.
A simple example to extract numerical data is to use “=Extract(A2; 4, 4)” with this we would be telling Excel that from the displayed image obtain the 4 numbers that are presented at the end of the expression. You can also use macros in VBA to get those numbers .
formulas
As we mentioned before, you can use formulas to obtain the data you want in the cells you are working on, so you will see that you have the possibility of working with matrix elements or formulas without matrices to extract your data. However, this process requires a great knowledge of Excel to properly handle the interactions of the functions you use in your formulas.
Typically you can use the functions “If.Error”, “Long”, “Find”, “Extract”, or also “Kth.Minor”, “Sum.product”, “If”, among others. The concatenation of these functions will allow you to generate a logic to find the data you are looking for without the need to use a Macro.
What is the ‘Quick Fill’ tool for?
When you have structured data in the form of a pattern in your alphanumeric expressions, you can make effective use of the “Quick Fill” tool that Excel makes available to you.
This will allow you to obtain the numbers, or alphanumeric characters that you choose, and once you perform the first interaction manually, when you choose the rest of the empty cells and click on “Quick Fill” that you will find in “Data” you will automatically obtain the rest of values.
It is important that you keep in mind that it will not be an effective tool when you have unstructured or random data, that is, if it is disordered or without any pattern.
How to get specific data?
If what you require is the extraction of data from a specific part of an alphanumeric string present in a cell of your spreadsheet, you can use the following methods:
Left, Right Functions
These functions are essential to get, as their names indicate, the content of data present in a cell, to the left side or to the right side, as needed. Now, both work in the same logical way, that is, you must use for example “=Left(A2;3)” with this you tell Excel to extract the data that is in cell A2 , to the left of the 3 character.
Similarly with the right function, by using “=right(A2;3)” you tell Excel to take the data in cell A2 and extract the characters from the third and to the right.
Data at the beginning and at the end
The easiest way to obtain the data at the beginning and at the end of a cell is using the Extract function, you only have to take into account what the syntax asks you for, that is, in principle you must place the study cell, for example “A2 “, then you must choose the position from which the data extraction will be made and finally the number of characters that will be extracted.
If you want to extract, for example, the first 4 data from a cell, you must put “= extract(A2; 1; 4)” and you will obtain the first 4 characters of the study cell; while if you want to get the last 3 characters of the cell you could apply the following function “=extract(A2;(length(A2)-3);3)” where the “length” function places the number or length of the text present in the study cell.
Why is it not possible to apply a single formula to extract numbers and letters?
Normally alphanumeric expressions are not usually written with a defined pattern or structure, so to obtain numbers and letters you must use nested formulas that allow you to solve individual steps that are used by upstream functions.
In this way, you will have the possibility of automatically generating the analysis of the cells , without the need for the numbers or letters to have a defined position.
In addition, Excel functions tend to be generated to deal with numbers or texts, so to carry out an analysis where both aspects are involved, the mixture of functions must be used through various formulas.
As you may have noticed, data management in Excel is always possible and you have many tools for it, based on the “Extract” function . We hope you have enjoyed this entry and we invite you to continue your reading on other Excel topics such as budgeting a company for a project using Excel .
