Excel Old School Array Help

[denzo36]

Hi all, I should know this but for the life of me can't remember so apologies!

I've have a string that is of length 13 characters but should be 12 characters long. When my data is downloaded from the source I'm using, hidden characters are included but appear to placed at different positions in the string meaning what should be a 12 character string is becoming 13 character string.

I've managed to figure out how to identify where the hidden character is within the string but now need to bring the string back together minus this hidden character. I'd rather not use VBA for this but I think an array formula should do it, unfortunately as this is my work pc I only have Excel 2016 without dynamic arrays or the TEXTJOIN function which could do it pretty easily.

The formula I'm using in B2 is =CHAR(CODE(MID($A2,COLUMNS($C$1:C$1),1))) which is identifying the hidden character '?' in my string. As you can see from row 2 and row 3, '?' appears at the start of the string in row 2 but and the end of the string in row 3. I'd like to be able to concatenate columns B to N to only include characters that are not '?' so I was thinking some along the lines B2:N2<>"?" and extract the true from this

Anyone got an ideas?

 

[jasonb75]

See if this works (without the extra columns)

=CONCAT(IFERROR(--MID(A2,ROW($1:$13),1),"")

edit:- ignore that, I missed the 2016 requirement in your post, off to devise a new plan.

 

[denzo36]

Hi Jason, cheers for the reply but I haven't got office 365 on my work pc as mentioned in my post, I know my profile says I do but this is for my own personal pc!

 

[jasonb75]

Try this one, array confirmed

=REPLACE(A2,MATCH(2,1/ISERROR(--MID(A2,ROW($1:$13),1))),1,"")

Note that this only works with a single hidden character in the string, more could be a problem.

 

[denzo36]

That's brilliant thanks a million Jason much appreciated!