How to extract text and numbers in Excel

Text Toolkit contains a tool that allows extracting text, substrings, and numbers from one cell to another cell in your Excel worksheet. Forget about complex formulas with the FIND, MIN, LEFT, or RIGHT functions. Extract Text is a perfect alternative that offers you several radio buttons for when you want to extract text or numbers.

• Before you start
• How to use Extract Text

Before you start

We care about your data. The add-in will back up your file if you select the corresponding option.

How to extract substrings and numbers in Excel

Click the Extract icon that you'll find in the Text group on the Ablebits Data tab:

You'll see the Extract Text pane:

1. Select the column with values where you want to extract text or numbers.
   Note. The column with the extracted substrings will be inserted to the right of the initially selected column. For example, if you extract characters or substrings from column A, the result will be placed to a new column B.
2. If needed, click the Expand selection icon to highlight the whole table.
3. Click the radio button with the option that corresponds to the way you want to extract values:
   • The first N characters. Enter the number of characters to extract from the beginning of the selected cells.
   • The last N characters. Specify the number of characters to extract at the end of your cell values.
   • Extract text by position. Enter the necessary Position number of the first character and The number of characters to extract.
   • All before text. Type the text that has the substring to extract in front of it.
   • All after text. Specify the text that has the substring to extract behind.
   • Extract numbers. Pull all numbers from the selected cells.
4. Tick the Insert as formula checkbox to recalculate the resulting numbers if the source data changes.
5. To make sure your data is safe, check the option to Back up the worksheet.

Press Insert results to see the extracted records in a new column inserted to the right of your source column.