Forum Discussion
Excel formula - returning multiple text strings in a cell
Hi, Newbie here. Is have a cell that could contain apples and/or oranges and/or pears. I'm able to use an IF formula to extract either apples or oranges or pears but get a false value when the cell contains 'apples and oranges'. Is there a way to extract such a combination out of a cell?
As variant if add list of possible variant in column O, and assuming your version of Excel supports TEXTJOIN,
in M2 is
=IF( LEN(TEXTJOIN(", ",1,IF(COUNTIF(B2,"*"&$O$2:$O$4&"*"),$O$2:$O$4,"")))=0, "apple", TEXTJOIN(", ",1,IF(COUNTIF(B2,"*"&$O$2:$O$4&"*"),$O$2:$O$4,"")) )and drag it down.
Could you post a representative spreadsheet that illustrates what you're describing. One that works on the one hand, but not on the other. It's hard to diagnose without actually seeing and experiencing the reality, no matter how clear your description is (and it's pretty good)...
I do realize that your apples and oranges is meant as an example, but I'm having a hard time visualizing why you can make the one condition work, but not the other.
moncho47 If you do not care for the exact order of occurrence of the found texts in the cell, the attached workbook may return the results you want (use the formula in the last column, assuming that you have a list of your search texts in cell D1, E1, F1). It is always better to have the search texts listed and use reference in the formula to those cells rather than hardcoded. You can always expand the list of your search texts and simply add more components to the formula.
As variant if add list of possible variant in column O, and assuming your version of Excel supports TEXTJOIN,
in M2 is
=IF( LEN(TEXTJOIN(", ",1,IF(COUNTIF(B2,"*"&$O$2:$O$4&"*"),$O$2:$O$4,"")))=0, "apple", TEXTJOIN(", ",1,IF(COUNTIF(B2,"*"&$O$2:$O$4&"*"),$O$2:$O$4,"")) )and drag it down.
