Formula to extract last two letters from each word

14spar15 · #1 04-05-2019, 12:00 PM

Hello, I have a cell that has a list of years (example 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004) and I need a formula to change this example into (99 00 01 02 03 04). There may be anywhere from one year up to 20 years in this cell. I found this

Code:

=LEFT(A1,1)&MID(A1,FIND(" ",A1&" ",1)+1,1)&MID(A1&"  ",FIND(" ",A1&"  ",FIND(" ",A1&" ",1)+1)+1,1)

that I was going to modify (It uses first letter of each word) but I am finding out it is only going to work for up to 3 years. I guess I could draw it out to 20 words/numbers but it seems there is probably a better way. Any ideals here? Thank-You

xor · #2 04-05-2019, 11:47 PM

See cell B1 in the attached.
As you can see the solution requires helper cells (as C1:V1). If you so wish these can be moved to somewhere out of sight.

Edit:
Only now I see that you use Office 2010 so I guess you can't use above solution as it requires the function TEXTJOIN which is only available in the most recent version of Excel.

14spar15 · #3 04-06-2019, 07:59 AM

Hello, I appreciate you taking the time to help here. It did get me thinking in another direction through. Maybe if I extract each year into its own cell, trim the first two numbers off each and put these new values back together. Might it be better to modify the formula in my original post to extract the last 2 numbers and string out the capacity to do up to 20 words. I have tried this but I don't have enough understanding of the formula to do this. Just a note: each original number will always have 4 characters and they will always be numbers. Thanks again..

NoSparks · #4 04-06-2019, 08:19 AM

If you can live with an xlsm file,
how about a User Defined Function (UDF) ?

Code:

Public Function LastTwo(Orig As String) As String
    Dim i As Long, arr
    arr = Split(Orig, " ")
    For i = LBound(arr) To UBound(arr)
        LastTwo = Trim(LastTwo & " " & Right(arr(i), 2))
    Next i
End Function

Pecoflyer · #5 04-06-2019, 08:25 AM

Quote:

It did get me thinking in another direction through. Maybe if I extract each year into its own cell, trim the first two numbers off each and put these new values back together. Might it be better to modify the formula in my original post to extract the last 2 numbers and string out the capacity to do up to 20 words.

Yes, but it would be very cumbersome, even using Text to columns .
And to put the results together you would have something like =A1&" "&A2&" "....
The UDF NoS provided would be easier ( haven't tested it but I suppose he/she did

)

xor · #6 04-06-2019, 09:52 AM

I think NoSparks solution is unbeatable

If however you prefer no VBA you might be interested in the attached.

14spar15 · #7 04-06-2019, 10:37 AM

Worked like a charm. Already using xlsm so this fit right in and this is so simple. Maybe "simple" is the wrong word because I can't figure out how it works. Very short and compact. It's something else I can study when I get caught up here. Many Thanks..

NoSparks · #8 04-06-2019, 12:02 PM

@ xor
I'm no good with formulas, but I think you need to re-visit populating C1 to V1 as it misses the second year shown in A1

xor · #9 04-06-2019, 11:32 PM

@NoSparks

... populating C1 to V1 as it misses the second year shown in A1 ....

You are right. ´
The formula in C1 should just be copied to D1:V1 and it works. I don't know what has happened.

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