Excel has a lot of functions that can deal with text. The first three I will introduce you to are Left, mid, and right. These are functions in Excel for pulling bits of texts out of other texts.
For example, if you had an address that has the post code on the end, after a comma, and you want to pull out the post code, you can use right to do that. Or if you have stock codes, that you need a part of then left, mid, or right may be the thing you need.
= LEFT(text, [num_chars])
Left just needs the one input. The text you want to extract from. This would normally be a reference to a cell where the text is. The second input in optional (notice the square brackets). If you don’t put anything then you will get one character returned from the text. If you want more than one character, then enter the number as the second input.
As you can see in the example, the first 5 characters are being returned from the stock code.
Right works in the same way, but starts at the right hand end of the given text string.
MID works in a similar way but does require three inputs, and none of them are optional.
=MID(text, start_num, num_chars)
The text you want to extract from. Where in text you want to start (i.e. the character number), and how many characters you want to extract.
So, the above function is starting from the fourth character, and then returning the next four characters.
Now you know some Excel text functions you can pull apart the text and get the bits you need.