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Excel function · Finding text

MID

Returns characters from the middle of a text.

What it does

MID takes characters from inside a text: you give the position to start at and how many characters to take.

=MID(text, start_num, num_chars)

Arguments in square brackets are optional, and … means you can add more of the same. In this Excel language, arguments are separated by ,

text: The text to take characters from.
start_num: The position of the first character to take. The first character of the text is 1.
num_chars: How many characters to take from there.

Order codes have a prefix, a number and a region. What is the number part of ORD-7731-EU?

	A	B
1	Order no.	Number part
2	ORD-7731-EU	7731

The formula in B2:

=MID(A2,5,4)

Result: 7731

ORD- takes up four characters, so the number starts at character 5. Taking four characters from there gives 7731.

Starting one character too early or too late. Count the separator too: the hyphen is character 4 here.
Leaving out the number of characters. Unlike LEFT and RIGHT, MID needs all three arguments.

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