How to Easily Extract From

Any String Without Using VBA

InStr
BY PAUL KELLY·19 COMMENTS

The VBA InStr function is one of the most used functions in VBA. It is used to find a string
within a string and indeed it does a very fine job.
However, it is often used to help extract part of a string and for this task it performs badly.
If you have found string extraction in VBA to be a painful process, then read on. This post
will show you a simpler and better way using three real world examples!

Contents [hide]
 1 A Quick Guide to this Post
 2 Quick Reference Notes
 3 Introduction
 4 When VBA InStr, Left, Right and Mid are useful
o 4.1 Using InStr to check if string contains text
o 4.2 Extracting with Left, Right and Mid
 5 Dealing with Strings of Varying Lengths
o 5.1 Using the VBA InStr Function with Left
o 5.2 Using the VBA InStr Function with Right
o 5.3 Using the VBA InStr Function with Mid
 6 The Split Function
 7 Example 1: Getting part of a file name
 8 Example 2: IP Address Range
 9 Example 3: Check if a filename is valid
 10 Conclusion
 11 What’s Next?
 12 Get the Free eBook

A Quick Guide to this Post

The following table provides a quick reference guide to what is covered in this post.

String Type Task How to

1234ABC334 Fixed size get left 4 chars Left(s,4)

1234ABC334 Fixed size get right 3 chars Right(s,3)

1234ABC334 Fixed size get chars 5,6,7 Mid(s,5,3)

"John Henry Smith" Variable size get first name Split(s," ")(0)

"John Henry Smith" Variable size get second name Split(s," ")(1)

"John Henry Smith" Variable size get third name Split(s," ")(2)

"John Henry Smith" Variable size Get last name Dim v As Variant
v = Split(s, " ")
lastname= v(UBound(v))

Quick Reference Notes

To find out more about the items referenced in the post check out the following links
If you would like to know more about the InStr or InStrRev functions then please
read Searching within a string.
If you would like to know more about Mid, Left or Right functions then check out Extracting
Part of a String.
For more about the Split function check out String to Array using Split.
The Like operator is covered in Pattern Matching
I use Debug.Print in my examples. It prints values to the Immediate Window which you can
view by pressing Ctrl and G (or select View->Immediate Window)

Introduction
In this post, I’m going to show you a better way to extract values from a string than using then
VBA InStr function with Left, Right or Mid.
This post is broken down as follows

 Section 1: How to extract from fixed sized strings.

 Section 2: How to extract from variable sized strings.
 Section 3: How to extract from variable sized string using the Split function.
 Sections 4 to 6: Some real world examples.

When VBA InStr, Left, Right and Mid are

useful
If you want to check if a string contains a value then InStr is fine for the job. If you want to do a
simple extraction then Left, Right and Mid also fine to use.

Using InStr to check if string contains text

In the following example, we check if the name contains “Henry”. If the return value of InStr is
greater than zero then the string contains the value we are checking for.
 ' Check if string contains Henry

If InStr("John Henry Smith", "Henry") > 0 Then

Debug.Print "Found"

End If

Extracting with Left, Right and Mid

The Left function is used to get characters from the left of a string.
The Right function is used to get characters from the right of a string.
The Mid function is used for the middle of the string. It is the same as Left except that you give
it a starting position.

Sub ExtractString()

Dim s As String: s = "ABCD-7789.WXYZ"

Debug.Print Left(s, 2) ' Prints AB

Debug.Print Left(s, 4) ' Prints ABCD

Debug.Print Right(s, 2) ' Prints YZ

Debug.Print Right(s, 4) ' Prints WXYZ

Debug.Print Mid(s, 1, 2) ' Prints AB

Debug.Print Mid(s, 6, 4) ' Prints 7789

End Sub
These three functions work fine if the text you require is always the same size and in the same
place. For other scenarios, they require the use of InStr to find a particular position in the
string. This makes using them complicated.

Use Left, Right or Mid when the characters will always be in the same position.

Dealing with Strings of Varying Lengths

Many of the strings you will deal with will be of different lengths. A simple example is when
you are dealing with a list of names. The string length and part you require(e.g. the first name)
may be of different each time. For example
Brooke Hilt
Pamela Jurado
Zack Kinzel
Eddy Wormley
Kaitlyn Rainer
Jacque Trickett
Kandra Stanbery
Margo Hoppes
Berenice Meier
Garrett Hyre
(If you need random list of test names then try this random name generator)
Using the VBA InStr Function with Left
In the following example, we are going to get the first name from a string. In this string the first
name is the name before the first space.
We use the VBA InStr function to get the position of the first space. We want to get all the
characters before the space. We subtract one from the position as this gives us the position of the
last letter of the name.

Sub GetFirstname()

Dim s As String, lPosition As Long

s = "John Henry Smith"

' Prints John

lPosition = InStr(s, " ") - 1

Debug.Print Left(s, lPosition)

s = "Lorraine Huggard"

' Prints Lorraine

lPosition = InStr(s, " ") - 1

Debug.Print Left(s, lPosition)

End Sub

Let’s look at the first example in the above code. The first space is at position 5. We substract 1
so which gives us position 4. This is the position of the last letter of John i.e.n.
We then give 4 to the Left function and it returns the first four characters e.g. “John”
We can perform the same task in one line by passing the return value from InStr to the Left
function.

Dim s As String

s = "John Henry Smith"

' Prints John

Debug.Print Left(s, InStr(s, " ") - 1)

Using the VBA InStr Function with Right

In this example, we will get the last word in the string i.e. Smith. We can use
the InStrRev function to help us. This is the same as InStr except it searches from the end of the
string.
It’s important to note that InStrRev gives us the position from the start of the string . Therefore,
we need to use it slightly differently than we used InStr and Left.

Sub GetLastName()
 Dim s As String: s = "John,Henry,Smith"

Dim Position As Long, Length As Long

Position = InStrRev(s, ",")

Length = Len(s)

' Prints Smith

Debug.Print Right(s, Length - Position)

' Alternative method. Prints Smith - do in one line

Debug.Print Right(s, Len(s) - InStrRev(s, ","))

End Sub

How this the above example works

1. We get the position of the last space using InStrRev: 11

2. We get the length of the string: 16.
3. We subtract the position from the length: 16-11=5
4. We give 5 to the Right function and get back Smith
Using the VBA InStr Function with Mid
In the next example, we will get “Henry” from the string. The word we are looking for is
between the first and second space.
We will use the Mid function here.

Sub GetSecondName()

Dim s As String: s = "John Henry Smith"

Dim firstChar As Long, secondChar As Long

Dim count As Long

' Find space position plus 1. Result is 6

firstChar = InStr(s, " ") + 1

' find 2nd space position. Result is 11

secondChar = InStr(firstChar, s, " ")

' Get numbers of characters. Result is 5

count = secondChar - firstChar

' Prints Henry

Debug.Print Mid(s, firstChar, count)

End Sub

You can see this is tricky to do and requires a bit of effort to figure out. We need to find the first
space. Then we need to find the second space. Then we have to substract one from the other to
give us the number of characters to take.

If have a string with a lot of words then this can get very tricky indeed. Luckily for us there is a
much easier was to extract characters from a string. It’s called the Split function.

The Split Function

We can use the Split function to perform the above examples. The Split function splits a string
into an array. Then we can easily access each individual item.

Let’s try the same three examples again and this time we will use Split.

Dim s As String: s = "John Henry Smith"

Debug.Print Split(s, " ")(0) ' John

Debug.Print Split(s, " ")(1) ' Henry

Debug.Print Split(s, " ")(2) ' Smith

Boom! What a difference using Split makes. The way it works is as follows

1. The Split function splits the string wherever there is a space.

2. Each item goes into an array location starting at location zero.
3. Using the number of a location we can access an array item.

The following table shows what the array might look like after Split has been used.
Note: the first position in the array is zero. Having zero based arrays is standard in programming
languages.

0 1 2

John Henry Smith

In the above code we split the string each time we used it. We could also split the string once and
store it in an array variable. Then we can access it when we want.
Sub SplitName()

Dim s As String: s = "John Henry Smith"

Dim arr() As String

arr = Split(s, " ")

Debug.Print arr(0) ' John

Debug.Print arr(1) ' Henry

Debug.Print arr(2) ' Smith

End Sub

If you would like to know more about arrays then I wrote an entire post about them called The
Complete Guide to Using Arrays in Excel VBA.
In the next sections, we will look at some real world examples. You will see the benefit of using
Split instead of the InStr function.
Please feel free to try these yourself first. It is a great way to learn and you may have fun trying
to figure them out(or maybe that’s just me!)

Example 1: Getting part of a file name

Imagine we want to extract the numbers from the following filenames
“VB_23476_Val.xls”
“VV_987_Val.txt”
“VZZA_12223_Val.doc”
This is similar to the example about where we get the second item. To get the values here we use
the underscore(i.e. “_”) to split the string. See the code example below

Sub GetNumber()

' Prints 23476

 Debug.Print Split("VB_23476_Val.xls", "_")(1)

' Prints 987

Debug.Print Split("VV_987_Val.txt", "_")(1)

' Prints 12223

Debug.Print Split("ABBZA_12223_Val.doc", "_")(1)

End Sub

In the real world you would normally read strings like these from a range of cells. So let’s say
these filenames are stored in cells A1 to A3. We will adjust the code above slightly to give us:

Sub ReadNumber()

Dim c As Range

For Each c In Range("A1:A3")

' Split each item as you read it

Debug.Print Split(c, "_")(1)

Next c

End Sub

Example 2: IP Address Range

The example here is taken from a question on the StackOverflow website.
The user has a string with an IP address in the format “BE-ABCDDD-DDS 172.16.23.3”.
He wants an IP of the range 172.16 to 172.31 to be valid. So for example
“BE-ABCDDD-DDS 172.16.23.3″ is valid
“BE-ABCDDD-DDS 172.25.23.3″ is valid
“BE-ABCDDED-DDS 172.14.23.3″ is not valid
“BE-ABCDDDZZ-DDS 172.32.23.3″ is not valid
This is how I would do this. First I split the string by the periods. The number we are looking for
is between the first and second period. Therefore, it is the second item. When we split the string
it is placed at position one in the array (remember that the array starts at position zero).
The resulting array will look like this

0 1 2 3

BE-ABCDDD-DDS 172 31 23 3

The code below shows how to do this

Sub IPAdd()

' Check the number to test different ip addresses

Dim s1 As String: s1 = "BE-ABCDDD-DDS 172.31.23.3"

' Split the string using the period symbol

Dim num As Long

num = Split(s1, ".")(1)

' Check the number is valid

Debug.Print num >= 16 And num <= 31

End Sub
Example 3: Check if a filename is valid
In this final example, we want to check that a file name is valid. There are three rules

1. It must end with .pdf

2. It must contain AA
3. It must contain 1234 after AA

The following tables shows some valid and invalid items

Filename Status

AA1234.pdf valid

AA_ljgslf_1234.pdf valid

AA1234.pdf1 Not valid - doesn't end with .pdf

1234 AA.pdf Not valid - AA does not come before 1234

12_AA_1234_NM.pdf Valid

First we will do this using the InStr and Right functions.

Sub UseInstr()

Dim f As String: f = "AA_1234_(5).pdf"

' Find AA first as the 1234 must come after this

Dim lPos As Long: lPos = InStr(f, "AA")

 ' Search for 1234 and ensure last four chars are .pdf

Debug.Print InStr(lPos, f, "1234") > 0 And Right(f, 4) = ".pdf"

End Sub

This code is very messy. Luckily for us, VBA has Pattern Matching. We can check the pattern of
a string without having to search for items and positions etc. We use the Like operator in VBA
for pattern matching. The example below shows how to do it.

Sub UsePattern()

Dim f As String: f = "AA_1234_(5).pdf"

' Define the pattern

Dim pattern As String: pattern = "*AA*1234*.pdf"

' Check each item against the pattern

Debug.Print f Like pattern ' True

End Sub

In the above example, the asterisk in the pattern refers to any number of characters.
Let’s break down this pattern *AA*1234*.pdf
* – any group of characters
AA – the exact characters AA
* – any group of characters
1234 – the exact characters 1234
* – any group of characters
.pdf – the exact characters .pdf
To show this works correctly, let’s try it on all the example names in the table

Sub UsePatternTest()

' Create a collection of file names

Dim coll As New Collection

coll.Add "AA1234.pdf"

coll.Add "AA_ljgslf_1234.pdf"

coll.Add "AA1234.pdf1"

coll.Add "1234 AA.pdf"

coll.Add "12_AA_1234_NM.pdf"

' Define the pattern

Dim pattern As String: pattern = "*AA*1234*.pdf"

' Check each item against the pattern

Dim f As Variant

For Each f In coll

Debug.Print f Like pattern

Next f

End Sub

The output is
True
True
False
False
True
To find out more about Pattern Matching and the Like keyword please check out this post.

Conclusion
InStr and InStrRev are really only useful for simple tasks like checking if text exists in a string.
Left, Right and Mid are useful when the position of the text is always the same.
The Split function is the best way to extract from a variable string.
When trying to check the format of a string that is not fixed in size, the Like keyword(i.e. Pattern
Matching) will generally provide an easier solution.