Forum Discussion

Copper Contributor

Sep 02, 2022

Solved

Extracting numbers before string characters start

Hi all, I am looking for an excel formula that can help me to extract numbers only from a mix of numbers and characters ONLY before the first character starts (i.e sometimes there are numbers aft...

excel

Formulas and Functions

Patrick2788
Sep 02, 2022
Rachwar30
Presuming your text is in A2, you might use:

=LEFT(A2,MIN(IFERROR(SEARCH(CHAR(SEQUENCE(26,,65,1)),A2),""))-1)

Patrick2788

Silver Contributor

Sep 02, 2022

Rachwar30

Presuming your text is in A2, you might use:

=LEFT(A2,MIN(IFERROR(SEARCH(CHAR(SEQUENCE(26,,65,1)),A2),""))-1)

CourtneyTX

Copper Contributor

Dec 11, 2024

Patrick2788I just used this to help me extract numbers from a difficult text string today! I'd love to understand how these functions are working together. Can you explain?

SergeiBaklan
Diamond Contributor
Dec 14, 2024
CourtneyTX , slightly modified Patrick2788 formula

=IFNA( CONCAT( REGEXEXTRACT( A1,"\d+",1) ), "no digits")
Patrick2788
Silver Contributor
Dec 12, 2024
Much has changed in two years.
An even easier solution:
=REGEXEXTRACT(A1,"^\d+")
^ -indicates to start at the first character in the string
\d - any digit
+ is added to indicate "1 or more digits"