Often we deal with data where numbers are buried inside text and we need to extract them. Today morning I had such task. As you know, we recently ran a survey asking how much salary you make. We had 1800 responses to it so far. I took the data to Excel to analyze it. And surprise! the numbers are a mess. Here is a sample of the data.
Now, how do I extract the salary amounts from this without typing the values?
My first thought is to write a user defined function to extract the number from text. But I usually shy away from VBA. So I wanted to see if there is a formula based approach to extract the number from text.
Using formulas to extract number from text
To extract number from a text, we need to know 2 things:
- Starting position of the number in text
- Length of the number
For example, in text US $ 31330.00 the number starts at 6th letter and has a length of 8.
So, if we can write formulas to get 1 & 2, then we can combine them in MID formula to extract the number from text!
Finding the starting position of number in text
To find the starting position, we need to find the first character which is a number (0 to 9). In other words, if we can find the positions of 0 to 9 inside the given text, then the minimum of all such positions would be starting position.
Sounds complicated?!? Well, in that case look at the formula and then you will understand why this works.
Assuming the text is in A1 and the range lstNumbers contains 0 to 9, below formula finds starting position
{=MIN(IFERROR(FIND(lstNumbers,A1),””))}
You need to array enter it (CTRL+SHIFT+Enter)
How this formula works?
FIND(lstNumbers, A1) portion: This part finds where each of the numbers 0 to 9 occur in the text in A1. If a match is found, the position is returned. Else we get an error. For US $ 31330.00 the values would be,
{10;7;#VALUE!;6;#VALUE!;#VALUE!;#VALUE!;#VALUE!;#VALUE!;#VALUE!}
Meaning, 0 occurs at 10th position, 1 occurs at 7th position, 3 occurs at 6th position and everything else (2,4,5,6,7,8,9) do not occur in the number.
IFERROR(…,””) portion: Then, we replace errors with empty spaces so that MIN could work its magic.
At this stage, the result would be, {10;7;””;6;””;””;””;””;””;””}
Related: IFERROR Formula – syntax & examples
{=MIN(…)} portion: This would find the minimum of {10;7;””;6;””;””;””;””;””;””} which is 6. The starting position of number inside text.
Because we are finding multiple items, we need to array enter the formula to get correct result.
Finding the length of number
Once we find starting point, next we need to know the length of the number. There are many ways to do this. Depending on the variety in your input data, you can choose a technique that works best.
Approach 1 – counting number of digits in text
My first approach is to count number of digits in the text and use it as length. For this, we can break the text in to individual characters and then see if each of them is a number or not.
Assuming the text is in A1, the number of digits in it are,
=SUMPRODUCT(- -ISNUMBER(MID(A1,ROW($A$1:$A$200),1)+0))
MID(A1,ROW($A$1:$A$200),1) + 0 portion: This breaks the text in A1 in to individual characters (assumes the max length is 200) and then adds 0 to them.
At this stage, you have 200 values some of them numbers, others errors.
ISNUMBER(…) portion: This checks all the 200 values for numbers. After this, we will have 200 true or false values.
— ISNUMBER (…) portion: This converts the true, false values to 0s and 1s. (by double negating Excel will convert boolean values to number equivalents).
SUMPRODUCT(…) portion: This finally sums up all 1s thus giving us the number of digits in the text.
Does it work?
While this approach works well for some numbers, it fails in other cases. For example, a text like US $ 31330.00 has number portion with 8 characters (31330.00) where as our formula would say the length is 7 (because decimal point . is not a number and hence ISNUMBER() would give false for that).
So I had to move on to next approach.
Approach 2 – counting number of digits, commas & decimal points in text
The next approach is to count not only numbers, but also commas & decimal points in the text. For this, first I placed all the digits (0 to 9) and comma & decimal point in a range called as lstDigits.
Below formula counts how many of lstDigits are in text in A1.
=SUMPRODUCT(COUNTIF(lstDigits,MID(A1,ROW($A$1:$A$200),1)))
COUNTIF(lstDigits, MID(…)) portion: This checks how many times each of the 200 characters appear in lstDigits.
This would be an array of counts. For example {0;0;0;0;0;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;…} for US $ 31330.00, indicating that first 5 are not in lstDigits and then we have 8 in lstDigits.
SUMPRODUCT(…) portion: just sums all the numbers, hence we get length as 8.
Related: SUMPRODUCT Formula – examples & explanation
Extracting numbers from text
Once we have starting position of number & its length, we can combine them in a MID formula to extract the number. Here is the result for our sample data set.
As you can see, this method works well, but fails in some cases like,
- European number formats (, for decimal point and . for thousands)
- Text with multiple numbers
Fortunately, in my data set, we had only a few incidents like these. So I have decided to manually adjust them than work out even more complicated formula.
Using Macros to extract numbers from text
As you can guess, we can use a simple macro (or UDF) to extract numbers from a given text. We will learn how to do this next week.
Download Example Workbook
Click here to download example workbook with all these formulas. Examine the formulas to understand how you can extract numbers from text in Excel.
How do you Extract numbers from Text?
Often I deal with data like this. I use a mix of techniques. Apart from the one mentioned above I also use,
- getNumber() UDF to extract numbers from text (more on this next week)
- Use SUBSTITUTE to clear formatting (replace dots with empty spaces and commas with dots to convert from European format to standard format)
- Use VALUE to extract the number (works when number is shown as text)
- Use +0 to force convert numbers from text (works when number is shown as text)
What about you? How do you extract numbers from text? What are your favorite techniques? Please share using comments.
Tips on cleaning data using Excel
If you use Excel to clean data, go thru these articles to learn some powerful techniques.
25 Responses to “Display Alerts in Dashboards to Grab User Attention [Quick Tip]”
I prefer the red,grey,light grey,black icon set. I've also used in-cell pie charts from Fabrice's Sparklines for Excel as an alert which could also provide another piece of information.
I prefer the red,grey,light grey,black icon set. I've also used in-cell pie charts from Fabrice's Sparklines for Excel as an alert which can also provide another piece of information.
For Excel 2007, your formula should do the same as the Excel 2003 version, so that non-alert rows are blank - if they are 0, the unnecessary green icon will show
Hi Chandoo,
Nice Post !! just to add something for EXL 2003, we can also 4 Ifs and link to the alert data
For Ex: If we have alert data in Cell A2 and want to split in 4 orders namely <25%, 25-50%, 50-75% and 75%< then we can following formula and put fonts as you have suggested :
=IF(A2<0.25,CHAR(153),IF(A2<=0.5,CHAR(155),IF(A2=0.76,CHAR(152)))))
And then using Conditional Formating we can dashboard reflected on different COLOURS as per their respective alert.
Best Regards
Rohit1409
Hi Chandoo,
Nice Post !!! just to add something for EXL 2003, we can also 4 Ifs and link to the alert data
For Ex: If we have alert data in Cell A2 and want to split in 4 orders namely <25%, 25-50%, 50-75% and 75%< then we can following formula and put fonts as you have suggested :
=IF(A2<0.25,CHAR(153),IF(A2<=0.5,CHAR(155),IF(A2=0.76,CHAR(152)))))
And then using Conditional Formating we can dashboard reflected on different COLOURS as per their respective alert.
Best Regards
Rohit1409
The Complete formula [Don't Know how it got cut ]
=IF(A2<0.25,CHAR(153),IF(A2<=0.5,CHAR(155),IF(A2=0.76,CHAR(152)))))
PS : Use in single line [I have split it to avoid cuts 😉 ]
Hi Chandoo..
why it is not displaying the complete formula..
anyways here is the balance
"=IF(A2<0.25,CHAR(153), IF(A2<=0.5,CHAR(155), IF(A2=0.76,CHAR(152)))))"
@Rohit... your formulas are fine. Just that the width of comment area is fixed and hence my website is cropping it at 640pixels. I just edited your formula and added few white spaces so that it wraps nicely.
Very good idea btw.. kudos!
Hi,
Maybe just go for 'bold' ; 'underline' or 'italic' to draw the users attention? Those methods (if those can be called methods) are used cross media type (books, journals, blogs, billboards, ...) to guide the readers eye to valuable information.
Just a basic thought
@Tom.. good idea..
[...] has a very nice writeup on how to add such alerts to dashboard sheets. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Divide your data set into workbooksHow to enforce [...]
Hi Chandoo,
You certainly grabbed my attention! although I wasn't sure what my brother (Suresh) and cousin (Shyam) were doing right, and I was doing wrong? 😉
I love your blog btw - Many thanks for all your hard work in unravelling the secrets and mysteries of Excel!
Best regards
Ramesh
I thought I saw an advertisment for a book about learning excel called excel himalaya or something. It cost about 35.00 us money but seemed to have the things I need to have my admin assistant to start to use. I was hoping to start with this book and then send her to school if she shows some interest and aptitude. Any help on this would be appreciated. Thanks
Great web site and information!!!!
@Jeff... checkout http://chandoo.org/wp/2010/08/25/excel-everest-review/
thanks, your website is awesome!
[...] Alerts to highlight focus areas [...]
[...] There are lots of numbers in this dashboard. I would suggest adding few more visualizations like showing indicators or applying conditional formatting or replacing a table with a chart. This would reduce the [...]
[...] is the same technique as alert icons in dashboard. Just that I also showed green [...]
[...] is the same technique as alert icons in dashboard. Just that I also showed green [...]
Hi Chandoo
Firstly thanks for all the cool tips on how to use Excel better.
I am new to the site and have a question which you may be able to assist with but dont know if these comment boxes are the best way of asking ?
I am looking at assets and trying to calculate the depreciation total by taking a year (say 2010) adding the expected life of the asset (say 10 years) then comparing that to a future date (say 2015) using an IF statement. The calculation in normal is - IF((year in col B (2010) plus 10years)>year 2015, add a years depreciation, otherwise leave blank). The converted date value does not appear able to add 10 years in order to compare it to 2015. Am I missing something ?
I use the “IF” Statement in conjunction with Conditional Formatting in MS Excel to give verbiage to alert one of a required action, dependant on a review date. This makes a visual stimulus, plus it clues one as to what the conditional format is trying to warn you about and what follow-up actions are required.
Wow, I'm really impressed with dashboards. I had no idea this stuff was even possible with excel. I'd like to offer an interactive dashboard to my customers, showing analytics of their data. I have a .pdf file with the datapoints. I'd like them to enter the data on my website, and be able to see their data. Is something like that possible.
Hi Chandoo,
I've recently purchased the package for both templates.
In the portfolio dashboard,under the calculations worksheet, I'm attempting to change the date range in the gantt chart to show only the range of the project that starts in late 2013. How do I do this?
Thanks
Adam
[...] is the same technique as alert icons in dashboard. Just that I also showed green [...]
Hi Chandoo,
I'm new at Excel Dashboard and found your blog really useful and helpful! It's very nice of you that you dedicate your time to do this.
Could you please explain how can I use Alerts based on dates on a Dashboar?
For example, if a target date is coming closer to the actual date, the alert is yellow or red.
I'd really appreciate some help!
Thank you
Where can I download the file Excel of Averall Statistics ???
Thanks a lot.