Excel Challenge 03: Stop Wasting Time—Extract Text Like a Pro!

Excel Challenge 03: Stop Wasting Time—Extract Text Like a Pro!

Manually extracting text between specific characters like ( ), ** * **, [ ], or { } can be frustrating and time-consuming. You’d have to rely on complex MID, FIND, and LEN formulas, making it difficult to read and maintain. But with Excel 365’s TEXT functions, we can solve this problem in a few simple steps!

In this tutorial, we’ll walk through a step-by-step method to extract text between different character pairs using TEXTBEFORE and TEXTAFTER—all while keeping the formula clean and efficient.

Here’s what you’ll learn:
✔️ How TEXTBEFORE works: Extract everything before a specific closing character.
✔️ Why we use -1 in TEXTBEFORE: Capture text before the last closing character instead of the first.
✔️ Using TEXTAFTER: Remove the opening character to extract only the desired text.
✔️ Handling multiple character pairs: Work with parentheses, brackets, curly braces, and asterisks in a single formula.
✔️ Combining everything into one dynamic formula that works across different cases.

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll be able to:
✅ Extract text between different symbols dynamically without helper columns.
✅ Understand how TEXTBEFORE and TEXTAFTER process arrays.
✅ Apply this method to clean and structure data efficiently.

💡 Pro Tip: If your data has inconsistent formats, consider using Power Query for a more structured approach!

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Links:
Challenge Author: Omid Motamedisedeh
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omidmot
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@OmidBI
Website: https://www.omidbi.com/
Original Challenge Post:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/omidmot_powerabrquery-excel-powerabrqueryabrtips-activity-7266918581626359808-t1rc?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAACzSSREBRIqNPP6BkrLrZS8Wufxxkdy0R8U
Download the Example File:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vtiLgzbdOYMJgIe35q9tRC6uCCRSVBKK/edit?gid=281724364#gid=281724364

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