Excel has hundreds of formulas. But as a new learner or user, you may want to just focus on top 10 formulas to get the most out of it. Assuming you already know the basics (check out Beginner Excel page if you are complete newbie), here is a list of top 10 Excel formulas for you.
Top 10 Excel Formulas – The list
#1 Table & Structural References
If you don’t know how to effectively talk to your data, then your formulas will suck. That is why, my #1 formula is not even a formula. Learn how to refer to data in the spreadsheet, especially in tables. You can use tablename[column name] notation to refer to entire columns of data. You can also use [@column] to refer to column value in the current row of table.
For example, you can write formulas like these:
- SUM(mySales[no. of customers]) to find how many customers we had.
- SUMIFS(mySales[no. of customers], mySales[product], “FastCar”) to find how many customers bought “FastCar”
Learn more about tables & structural references in Excel.
#2 Bye bye nested IF, Hello IFS formula
You might already know about IF formula. We use it to test logical conditions and output one of two possibilities. But what if you have a very long, complex scenario that requires multiple IF functions? Simple, use IFS() instead. It can take any number of condition, output combinations and works elegantly.
Example Nested IF formula: =IF(A1>20, “Very high”, IF(A1>15, “High”, IF(A1>10, “Medium”, IF(A1>5, “Low”, “Very Low”))))
Same formula as IFS() =IFS(A1>20,"Very high", A1>15,"High", A1>10,"Medium", A1>5,"Low", A1<=5,"Very low")#3 SUMIFS / COUNTIFS
Almost all business analysis situations will involve questions like “what is the count / sum of things that meet conditions A,B…N”. And to answer them elegantly and swiftly, you need SUMIFS / COUNTIFS. The beauty of these functions is that they are easy to learn and use.
Example SUMIFS formula:
=SUMIFS(data[Purchase Amount], data[Lead Group],"Online", data[Quantity], ">3")
Sums up [Purchase Amount] column where [Lead Group] is online AND [Quantity] is more than 3. Learn all about SUMIFS formula.
#4 SWITCH – CHOOSE() for new age
SWITCH is one of the new functions introduced in Excel. This versatile function helps you select one of the many outcomes based on any type of conditions. In some ways, SWITCH is similar to IFS, but it also has default option, so if none of the SWITCH conditions are met, you get value in the default parameter.
Example SWITCH formula:
=SWITCH([@State],"CO","Other","WA","Other","TX","South","East")
What it does?
Looks at [@State] value and prints one of the outputs - "Other", "South" or "East"
#5 VLOOKUP – Always in style
The other day, I went to drinks with a few mates after work. We were sitting in a hip bar drinking best of Wellington beer on a sunny day. I overhear two ladies talking about, wait for it…. VLOOKUP. I turn around and look at them. They look like fresh graduates celebrating a busy week of work and they could be talking about almost anything, but VLOOKUP is trending.
So yeah, learn VLOOKUP you must. It is the quintessential Excel function for data analysis. You can answer questions about your data using VLOOKUP.
If you are an absolute VLOOKUP virgin, try introduction to VLOOKUP page or What is VLOOKUP video. For more advanced lookup trickery and examples, checkout VLOOKUP tag or get a copy of my VLOOKUP Book.
#6 SUBTOTAL – Filter what you want, see summaries
You know that SUM(), COUNT(), AVERAGE() etc. give you basic stats about your data. But what if you filtered out to look at data for “HR department” only or “people aged between 25 and 40”. Your SUM() doesn’t change.
This is where SUBTOTAL() comes in. By default, SUBTOTAL ignores anything that is filtered away. So what you see is what you get.
Example SUBTOTAL formula:
=SUBTOTAL(9,data[Purchase Amount])
Sums up (9) filtered values in data[Purchase Amount] column.Learn more about Excel SUBTOTAL formula.
#7 MAXIFS / MINIFS
You may already know about MAX() and MIN() formulas. But what if you want to know the maximum value based on a few criteria? Simple, use MAXIFS(). This newly added function is simple, versatile and easy to learn (if you know SUMIFS, then you know this too).
Example MAXIFS() formula:
=MAXIFS(data[Purchase Amount], data[Lead Group],"Online")
Returns maximum data[Purchase Amount] where [Lead Group] is "Online"#8 FIND / SEARCH
There are heaps of text formulas in Excel. But if you are just starting out, go with FIND(). It finds one text value inside another. If there is a match, FIND() returns the starting position of the match, else #VALUE error.
Keep in mind though, FIND() is case sensitive. Use SEARCH() if you don’t care about the case of data.
Examples of Excel FIND() and SEARCH() functions.
- =FIND(“l”, “Hello people..”) => 3
- =FIND(“P”, “Hello people..”) => #VALUE! error as P can’t be found.
- =FIND(“p”, “Hello people..”) => 7
- =SEARCH(“P”, “Hello people..”) => 7 as SEARCH doesn’t care for case
- =FIND(“p”, “Hello people..”, 8) => 10 Finds p after 8th letter – i.e. second p
#9 TODAY / NOW
Almost all business data will have a component of dates. So learning how to work with date & time values in Excel can be a huge help. If you are new to this, start with TODAY(). As the name suggests, TODAY() tells you the current date. This is a dynamic formula, so if you write =TODAY() in a cell, the date changes every day.
You can use NOW() formula to see current date & time.
Example – Calculating employee tenure in days:
If you have start date of an employee in a cell (A1), you can calculate their tenure (service) using TODAY() formula like this.
=TODAY() - A1
The answer will be number of days between A1 (Start date) and today.Learn all about working with date & time values in Excel.
#10 IFERROR – when #N/A happens
To err is human, to IFERROR is awesome.
Errors happen, but use IFERROR so that your audience see soothing messages rather than confounding #VALUE!s. IFERROR looks at internal formula or expression and if there is an error, prints alternative result you want.
Example IFERROR():
=IFERROR(VLOOKUP("THIS", Customers, 2, false), "Customer not found")
Looks for "THIS" in Customers table and returns 2nd column value if found, else says "Customer not found".Overview & Examples of Excel IFERROR formula.
Watch Top 10 Excel formulas – Video
I made a video about these top 10 formulas with an example data set. You will learn all the basics + some nifty tricks about these formulas in the video. Check it out below or watch it on my YouTube channel.
Download Top 10 formulas – Example workbook
Click here to download top 10 formula example file. Examine the formulas & table calculations to learn more. Use the data to write your own formulas and practice these skills.
Want to master formulas? – 3 resources for you
If you want to learn more about Excel formulas, you have come to the right place. Check out below three resources and be a formula master.
#1 – Read other formula articles
Formulas / functions are central to doing any kind of complex work in Excel. No wonder we have more than 400 pages on this on my site. Start with these examples and see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
- 100 Excel formulas for beginners
- Top 10 formulas for aspiring analysts – recommended
- What to do when Excel formula errors
#2 – Get a book
There are 100s of Excel books out there. I recommend getting one or two good ones to slowly & surely improve your skill. Start with these…
- Excel 2016 Bible by John Walkenbach
- Data Analysis & Business Modeling by Wayne Winston
- My book – The VLOOKUP Book by Chandoo
#3 – Learn from a course
Online video courses are easy and powerful way to learn everything you need from the comfort of your chair. I highly recommend either of these two for mastering Excel formulas & data analysis.
32 Responses to “Extract Numbers from Text using Excel VBA [Video]”
Interesting that you are posting this at the same time as Doug http://yoursumbuddy.com/regex-function-sum-numbers-string/
Looks like two different articles about two different subjects, extracting numbers in text vs. summing all the numbers in text. Also, articles are published 20 days apart. Is the interesting part that there were two articles written about Visual Basic techniques within this month?
Sorry, that should have said 1 day, not 20. Was looking at the wrong thing. I still think it's just a nice coincidences to have multiple articles about VB written. Dick Kusleika also routinely writes about VB at dailydoseofexcel.com
What a lucky coincidence. I know about Doug's blog, but havent had a chance to read it in a while. Thanks for sharing the link.
I think that the best lesson that can come from the several salary survey solutions is that one should have anticipated the variety of monetary units. If the survey utilized drop down currency lists and limited the salary field to whole numbers only, etc. the resulting input would have been far cleaner. Sorry, Chandoo, but the messy input was, in my opinion, self-inflicted.
You are right. Since there are more than 200 different currencies, I thought a currency field would complicate the survey. The bigger problem was, Google Docs (which I used for survey) does not have an option to capture only numbers. Input fields were by text, so people entered in lots of different formats.
But I am happy how it turned out. It taught me several lessons on how to clean data.
Next time I will use a better tool to capture such responses.
Your post made me check how the "regular" and "irregular" decimal separators look like in different countries and it appears to be really interesting case. Take a look:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark
Cheers.
I am pretty sure you can replace this code block from your article...
If Text Like "*.*,*" Then
european = True
Else
european = False
End If
with this single line of code...
european = Format$(0, ".") = ","
Just to follow up on my previous post, I think I may have misunderstood the intent of your code. You were not looking to see if the computer system was using a dot for the decimal point, rather, you were looking to see if the Text was using a dot as the decimal point, weren't you? If so, then you could use this single line of code as to replace your If..Then..Else block...
european = Text Like "*.*,*"
But what if the number in Text was not large enough to display a thousands separator? Or what if it were a whole number? In either of those cases your original test, and my replacement for it, will fail. Maybe this would be a better test...
european = Right(Format$(Text, "."), 1) = ","
You are right. I am checking if the text has European format. And I loved your one line shortcut. I did not think of using LIKE in such context. Thanks for sharing that.
Again, you are right that this method would fail if the number is not big enough for a thousands separator. Since my data has annual salaries, all numbers are usually in thousands. So I did not think about it.
Hi ,
I have a question please. I'm working on a report that has alphanumeric on it and I only need to retrieve 7 integers that starts with 7 and 3 example SCM RIS PX RIS 02 - 7152349, ADSF\243434134, CM532345 and i need to get the 7152349. Can you please help me on this? I truly appreciate your help!
Thank you very much!
Hi-
The post was wonderful. Please take a look at this function also
Function ExtractNumber(InputString As String) As String
'Function evaluates an input string character by character
' and returns numeric only characters
'Declare counter variable
Dim i As Integer
'Reset input variable
ExtractNumber = ""
'Begin iteration; repeat for the length of the input string
For i = 1 To Len(InputString)
'Test current character for number
If IsNumeric(Mid(InputString, i, 1)) Then
'If number is found, add it to the output string
ExtractNumber = ExtractNumber & Mid(InputString, i, 1)
End If
Next i
End Function
Thank you so much. Your function code is amazing. It very useful for my lesson. Thank you so much.
To be more international.
At the beginning, for the rench format :
If fromThis.Value Like "*.*,*" Or fromThis.Value Like "* *,*" Then
european = True
End If
And at the end :
ElseIf ltr = "," And european And Len(retVal) > 0 Then
retVal = retVal & Application.DecimalSeparator
End If
Hi Chandoo,
Sorry, but your code does not work correctly with my Hungarian excel. My decimal separator is "," so
getNumber = CDbl(retVal)
will not convert the string to value, because you hard-coded "." as separator.
And, as you mentioned: "method would fail if the number is not big enough for a thousands separator" I would like to add: would fail if the user did not enter the thousand separator and also would fail if the thousand separator is not "," nor "." but " " (space chr) - as in Hungary.
This two functions could help to determine the system settings:
application.DecimalSeparator
application.ThousandsSeparator
Conclusion:
you say: "We do not need special treatment for regular format (61,000.30) as Excel & VBA are capable of dealing with these numbers by default." - it is true in case you system uses the regular format. 🙂
Cheers,
Kris
Awesome! It works !!
But how does one take into account negative numbers (say the list has negative numbers and I want to retain those negative numbers)
Thanks.
Hi. When I download this example, my excel is not showing formulas exactly. I wanted a ready version of this example, please. Thank you
Hi Chandoo,
Thanks for this brilliant article like many others that you have written for the benefit of many. Unfortunately, I am constantly having problems downloading your sample workbooks. I am currently using Excel 2007, and each time I try to download any of your sample workbooks, for e.g. the 'Extract Numbers Using VBA workbook', I get the following message 'This file is not in a recognizable format'.
I always get this message each time I try to download any of your sample workbooks. Please kindly advise me on how to resolve this.
Thank you.
Kenny
I have numbers like 12345-12-1 which I want to extract from text strings. 12345 might be variable there as 123, 1234, 12345, 123456,1234567 or so. When I get that in other cell (Column) I should see multiple entries of similar numbers with - (hyphen). How to do that?
@Madhav
Assuming your data is in cell A1
=LEFT(A1,FIND("-",A1)-1)
Thanks Hui for your response. Thank you for your time to find potential solution for my problem.
I tried your formula but was not successful in using the same.
here is more clarification so that you/others could help me.
Column A has following in Cells A1 to A4.. could be long..
ABCD 12345-12-1 XYZ 9878-02-9
LMNOPQ 12345-12-1 STQ 789748-98-5
NFHFKDJFKDS 123-23-1, NDKANSD
A FDSAFNDS 12345-12-1, ASNDSAND
from such data I need to extract the number with hyphens
remove , immediately after the numbers, separate the numbers with spaces
Column B shall look like:
12345-12-1 9878-02-9
12345-12-1 789748-98-5
123-23-1
2345-12-1
2 separate strings (numbers) having hyphen (-) therein should be separated with space.
@Madhev
Have a look at a solution using a simple UDF
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zexf4t9tmxmt3m9/Get_Numbers.xlsm?dl=1
Thanks Hui that worked well with the examples I provided.
I should have given following type of example:
2-ABCD 12345-12-1 X-2-YZ 9878-02-9
in the above case I do not want to extract a number and hyphen which is connected to or is part of text string..
Can you please help me modify the code to ignore numbers and - with text string.?
Thanks in advance.
@Madhav
So what is the answer expected from
2-ABCD 12345-12-1 X-2-YZ 9878-02-9
Thanks for your interest and time Hui.
so when I have text like
2-ABCD 12345-12-1 X-2-YZ 9878-02-9 3-abc-4-efg in Cell A2
in B2 the answer should be only numbers with hyphens and no text with numbers or hyphens
12345-12-1 9878-02-9 OR
12345-12-1 some delimiter (, or 😉 9878-02-9
The logic I thought was (but unable to do)
1. remove all strings containing text (and - and numbers) and then extract only numbers containing hyphens
2. Extract numbers in only following format ( # is a digit below) and ignore numbers and hyphens in any other format
#######-##-#
######-##-#
#####-##-#
####-##-#
###-##-#
##-##-#
Hope this helps.
Why not just use the function =getNumber ?
=getnumber doesn't extract numbers with hyphens..
also need to ignore numbers and hyphens associated with text string
When I use this code that code give me error
cdb1 is not highlight can u explain me
@Deepak
It runs fine for me
Select the first line and Press F9 to set a stop point
goto a cell and edit the function and press Enter
Then you can step through the code when it runs using F8
report back what happens
HI,
How can we add spaces between numbers and removing decimals.
how can we make spaces in the reesult e.g 25 655 2335
Dear Team,
I need to extract number (cheque number) from a cell (some numbers may repeat that to be ignored),
Text is - :-Inward Clg Cheque 00992924 00992924,BD
Result should be - 992924
Kindly help in getting formula for this (please email the code or VBA Code)