Formula to bring part of a cell + format number issue

[sagan97]

Hi all, 

I need your help in regards to below matter, I think it is an easy one but I can´t sort it out:

I need a formula to bring he "2010" from cell A1. I made a tw-steps-workaround.

1) = RIGHT(A2,8)

2) = LEFT(A3,4)

That works, but for some reason, excel brings the value in a non-number format, which does not work for me because I need to aplpy a VLOOKUP after that.

Could you please take a look into a it and let me know how can I sort this out using just one formula and fix the format issue?

Many thanks!

[#2 · Accepted solution]

@sagan97 

=NUMBERVALUE(LEFT(B2,4))

You can try this formula in cell C2.

EDIT:

=NUMBERVALUE(LEFT(RIGHT(A2,8),4))

Try above formula in cell C2 if you only want one formula to extract "2010" in this example.

[#3]

Thanks!