Excel Tutorial – MID

The MID function is a useful function in Excel that allows you to extract a specific portion of a string of text based on the starting position and number of characters.

To use the MID function, you will need to follow these steps:

1. Select the cell where you want the result of the MID function to appear.
2. Type “=MID(” (without the quotes) into the cell.
3. Specify the cell or range of cells that contain the text that you want to extract a portion of.
4. Type a comma and then specify the starting position of the portion of text that you want to extract. The first character in the string is considered position 1.
5. Type a comma and then specify the number of characters that you want to extract.
6. Close the parenthesis by typing “)”.

For example, if you wanted to extract the first 5 characters of the text in cell A1, you could use the following formula: “=MID(A1, 1, 5)”. This will extract the first 5 characters of the text in cell A1, starting at the first character.

You can also use the MID function to extract a portion of a string of text that you specify directly in the formula. For example, if you wanted to extract the first 5 characters of the text “apple”, you could use the following formula: “=MID(“apple”, 1, 5)”. This will return the text “apple”.

You can also use the MID function to extract a portion of a combined string of text. For example, if you wanted to extract the first 5 characters of the combined text in cells A1 and A2, you could use the following formula: “=MID(A1 & A2, 1, 5)”. The “&” operator is used to combine the text in cells A1 and A2. This formula will extract the first 5 characters of the combined text.

I hope this tutorial has been helpful in understanding how to use the MID function in Excel.