Need help on how to extract specific country names based on region

[GITKE]

Hey there!

Beginner Excel user here.

So, I have a list of several countries in a column, and I just want to extract specific countries to a different column, without doing it manually. Basically, I have the names of all countries in the world, but I want to get only the names of African countries from this list. Is there a formula for doing this? A function maybe to "call out" the country names? FYI, I see suggestions that I can use VLOOKUP, but I have tried, and it does not work. Or maybe I am using it wrongly.

Thanks!

[#2 · Accepted solution]

@GITKE Excel doesn't know which continent/region each country in your list belongs to. So if you haven't added a column for the continent/region as well. there is no way to extract a list of African counties by their name only. If you have the continent/region with each country, you can put a filter on the table for the Region column or use the FILTER function to extract countries by region. Which Excel version are you using?

[#3]

@Riny_van_Eekelen Aha! that makes a lot of sense. The data came without regions added. The problem might be doing that manually as well.

I am using professional plus 2016. 

[#4]

@GITKE 

If you have Wolfram Alpha for your version of Excel you may use it to pickup such info

[#5]

@GITKE There are many links on  line that indicate countries by region/continent. Here's one of them.

https://www.clearias.com/countries-world-listed-continent/ 

With a little bit of copying and pasting, you can create a two column table.

[#6]

Thanks for the suggestion, Sergei.

[#7]

This helps a tonne. Thanks again

[#8]

@GITKE how are you? were you able to extract the region eventually I need to extract continent in my dataset too will be expecting your response Thank you