Removing specific data from within a field

[tmcleod]

I have the following data and other similar data (around 3000 rows in total) each with an address as outlined below in each row

Business 21487 Streatham High Road London SW16 3QG

And I want to extract the postcode data and put into a seperate field.

How can I do this?

 

[footej]

You may have to modify this formula for a distinct list of cities in your range, but it'll work for London

=MID(A1,FIND("London",A1)+7,8)

A1 is the reference of your address

the +7 starts after the space following london, so if your city length varies, the 7 will have to be modifies, as will the 8 if it's a varying lenght of postal codes.

 

[tmcleod]

Thanks a lot! That worked well for London.

Wanted to know if it possible to use V-LOOKUP to enter more cities and adjust appropriately to give me results for more cities and if so how?

 

[njimack]

The following isn't city-dependent, and seems to work for postcodes of 7 characters as well...

=MID(A1,FIND(" ",A1,FIND(" ",A1,LEN(A1)-10))+1,8)

 

[facethegod]

try this in A1 assuning the postal code is SW16 3QG

=RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-FIND("#",SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","#",LEN(A1)-1-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","")))))

HTH

 

[footej]

Sure, but to do that you'll need to pull out the city to build a table for your vlookup to reference, which is essentially the same process as pulling out the postal code. Here is another option.

You can copy your addresses into notepad, ctrl + H Find " " with "|" (omit quotes) and import this file into Excel using delimited and in the Other box type in |

Your postal code will always be the last 1 or 2 colums depending on if there is a space in the code as in your example.

At this point I would write a macro that starts in column N or something far away from your results, turn on relative reference and type in "=" then ctrl + Left Arrow twice, then in the next colums do the same thing

ctrl + Left Arrow takes you to the next cell with a value. then you can do while or just F5 3000 times.

Enjoy