Subscribe To
This Site

Mid Function

Mid Function belongs to the text and data worksheet function category. It is used to extract characters, words or phrases from a cell. Assuming that in one worksheet cell, it contains the data “71495865 What is Microsoft Excel”. Using the mid formula, we are able to extract the phrase What is Microsoft Excel. And here is how.

1. Assuming that the phrase “71495865 What is Microsoft Excel” is contained in cell A1.

2. And in cell B1, entered the mid formula as follows “=MID(A1,10,255)”.

3. The cell will return the result “What is Microsoft Excel”

Mid Function explained

a) In the above example, A1 is the cell that contains the phrase we wish to extract. It is the first piece of information that we need to put into the formula. “=MID(A1,10,255)”.

b) After the comma following the cell A1, we indicate the position which we want Excel to start extracting the characters. The position include spaces if there is any. “=MID(A1,10,255)”

c) And finally, we gave instruction on the number of characters we want Excel to extract from the starting position indicated in step b. We have put in the number 255, which is the maximum number of characters excel technically allowed* in a cell. There are others functions that can help to identify EXACTLY how many characters we should instruct Excel to extract. We will cover that in time to come.

*Technically allowed because this is the number of characters that can be safely process properly in excel. We are actually able to enter more than 255 characters into a cell. But there is no guarantee that it will function properly in an excel operation. For example, in a copy and paste worksheet operation, Excel will prompt you with a warning that some cells have more than 255 characters and some data might be lost if you proceed with the operations.

footer for mid function page