Finding the Nth Occurrence of a Character

Am I the only person who wonders why someone would want to identify the Nth occurrence of a character within a text string? I find myself wondering this not just with this tip but with other tips as well.

Why did you use SEARCHB rather than SEARCH? I "searched" quite a while on the Internet to find out what SEARCHB was (it's not even listed as part of Excel's functions) and finally found a very slight explanation on the Microsoft site. It has to do with SEARCHB counting 2 bytes per character when using some languages, as opposed to 1 byte per character when using SEARCH. Is there a reason that this should be done in this case?

Thanks.

Interesting. I'm looking for a way to find e-mails which contain more than three occurrences of a particular string.

Could I maybe connect Excel to gmail, imort the mail and use a variation of this to find messages which contain e.g. the word 'Pega' more than three times?

Thank for your post. It saves my time.

@Shakir,
Try the following suggested formula:
(see Figure 1 below)
--------------------------
Michael (Micky) Avidan
“Microsoft® Answers" - Wiki author & Forums Moderator
“Microsoft®” MVP – Excel (2009-2016)
ISRAEL

How to repeat left 3 characters of the name(SHAKIR) 8 times in Ms excel

There is a much shorter UDF (a one-liner) available for your FindN function...

Function FindN(sFindWhat As String, sInputString As String, N As Long) As Long
FindN = InStr(Replace(sInputString, sFindWhat, " ", 1, N - 1), sFindWhat)
End Function

@Yanal

This may interest you:

http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/excel-questions/440487-extract-text-number-column-help.html

hi

how can i extract the number between the "#" and the "-" as marked in the red below and for several times
"COST OF XO Ticket(s) # [29]
{ RJ } -- Ticket(s) # 5125838371064 - Pax = REBEKKA ROGGLI
- Ticket(s) # 5125838371065 - Pax = CHRISTOPH RIGGOLI
- Ticket(s) # 5125838371066 - Pax = NAEL ROGGLI CHD
- Ticket(s) # 5125838371067 - Pax = ELA ROGGLI CHD
- Ticket(s) # 5125838371068 - Pax = ALYA ROGGLI INF
- Ticket(s) # 5125838371069 - Pax = ANNA WINKLER
- Route = AMM/SSH/AMM
- Class ="

and if there is a macro to be used.

Thank you, for all your help and hope to fear from you soon.

@Gokulraj,
The original task was to find the position of the Nth occurrence of a character in a string AND NOT to find the position of the LAST occurrence.
--------------------------
Michael (Micky) Avidan
“Microsoft® Answers" - Wiki author & Forums Moderator
“Microsoft®” MVP – Excel (2009-2016)
ISRAEL

Just Place the below macro in Your excel as a Module Code.

Function LastpositionOfChar(strVal As String, strChar As String)

LongLastpositionOfChar = InStrRev(strVal, strChar)

End Function

@Sanjay,
Try the hereunder User Defined Function (UDF):
---------------------------------------
Function Extruct_Numbers_From_Within_Brackets(Rng As Range)
CR = 1
While CR < Len(Rng)
F1 = Application.Find("[", Rng, CR) + 1
F2 = Application.Find("]", Rng, F1) - 1
For N = F1 To F2
NM = NM + Mid(Rng, N, 1)
Next
NM = NM + ";"
CR = F2 + 1
Wend
Extruct_Numbers_From_Within_Brackets = Left(NM, Len(NM) - 1)
End Function
-----------------------
Michael (Micky) Avidan
“Microsoft® Answers" - Wiki author & Forums Moderator
“Microsoft®” MVP – Excel (2009-2015)
ISRAEL

Thanks You! Please solve my query here: I have a value in a cell A1 which contains:

M4.CTC.VA03.Verify Sales Documents.v2 [14294], MSUP.CTC.VA03.Verify Sales Documents.v2 [14957], MSUP.CTC.VA03.Verify Sales Documents.v2 [15019], MSUP.CTC.VA03.Verify Sales Documents.v3 [15156]

I would like to have a value in Cell B as: 14294;14957;15019;15156

Basically, it should look for a text "[" and then return all characters after untill reaches "]".

Please help.

wulflyng

Copy the surrounding text or complete tip to Notepad, and the hidden text will be displayed.

While using in VBA Range should be used.
[code]
Dim Ans As Integer
Ans = FindN("b", Range("C15"), 3)
MsgBox Ans
[/code]

On my system, an advertisement covers part of the first formula.

To make the search non-case sensitive, just add at the top of your VBA Module:

Option Compare Text