Excel Microsoft Excel Mid Function

Description

The Excel Mid function returns a specified number of characters from the middle of a supplied text string. 

The format of the function is : 

MID( text, start_num, num_chars ) 

Where the function arguments are:

The Mid function always returns a text string, even though this may be contain digits, and therefore may look like a number. This should be borne in mind if you wish to use the result of the function within further functions and formulas.

Mid Function Examples

The spreadsheet below shows three examples of the Mid function. 

The formulas are shown in the spreadsheet on the left and the results are shown in the spreadsheet on the right.

Using the Excel Mid Function with Dates

Common Problem: 

Some users make the mistake of attempting to use the , Left, Mid or Right functions on dates. 

Dates are stored in Excel as numbers, and it is only the cell formatting that makes them appear as dates in your spreadsheet. Therefore, if you attempt use the Left, Mid or Right function on a date, the function will return the end characters of the number that represents that date. 

For example, 01/01/1980 is represented by the number 29221, so applying the Mid function to a cell containing the date 01/01/1980 (and requesting that 2 characters, starting from the 2nd character are returned) would result in a returned value of "92". 

Solution No. 1 

Use the Day, Month or Year functions to extract individual parts of a date. 

Solution No. 2 

If you are not using the dates in other calculations, which rely on them being stored as numbers, you can convert the cells containing dates to text, using Excel's Text To Columns tool. To do this:

The data in your selected cells should now be stored as text within Excel, and the Mid function will work as expected.