Finding Positions of Formatted Characters in a Cell

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 19, 2022)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365


Gary has a worksheet that contains unstructured text strings that he needs to parse into component elements. Sometimes he needs to search for types of text rather than a specific character. For example, he might want to find the first, the Nth, or the last occurrence of any bold character (or any italics character) in the cell.

There is no intrinsic function or tool in Excel to accomplish this task. The regular Find and Replace feature returns matches for formatting, but not the position at which those matches occur. To get that specific about what you want to find, you'll need to use a macro. You can get the positioning information back into your worksheet if you implement the macro as a user-defined function.

The following macro accepts a range (intended to be a specific cell), an indicator of whether you want bold or italic (or both), and the occurrence of that formatting.

Function FindNth(r As Range, sType As String, N As Integer) As Integer
    Dim J As Integer
    Dim iCount As Integer
    Dim sStyle As String
    
    If r.Count = 1 Then
        FindNth = 0
        iCount = 0
        For J = 1 To Len(r.Text)
            sStyle = r.Characters(J, 1).Font.FontStyle
            If LCase(sStyle) = LCase(sType) Then
                iCount = iCount + 1
                If N = 0 Then
                    FindNth = J
                Else
                    If N = iCount Then
                        FindNth = J
                        Exit For
                    End If
                End If
            End If
        Next J
    Else
        FindNth = -1
    End If
End Function

In order to use the macro, use one of the following formulas in your worksheet:

=FindNth(A1, "bold", 2)
=FindNth(A1, "italic", 3)
=FindNth(A1, "bold italic", 1)

In each case the third parameter specifies which occurrence of the given formatting you want to find. The function returns the character position of that occurrence within the cell. If there is no such occurrence, then 0 is returned. If you specify multiple cells in the first parameter of the function, it returns a -1. If you specify an occurrence of 0, then the character position of the last occurrence of the specified format is returned.

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the ExcelTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (13402) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Weird Mouse Shortcut

If you like to use the mouse in your worksheet navigation efforts, you'll want to pay attention to this tip. Here you ...

Discover More

Changing the Return Address Location

When Word creates envelopes for you, there may be times that you don't like where it places the return address. ...

Discover More

Changing to a Non-US Date Format

Do you want to specify your months and days differently when displaying dates in your worksheets? This tip looks at how ...

Discover More

Program Successfully in Excel! This guide will provide you with all the information you need to automate any task in Excel and save time and effort. Learn how to extend Excel's functionality with VBA to create solutions not possible with the standard features. Includes latest information for Excel 2024 and Microsoft 365. Check out Mastering Excel VBA Programming today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Using SUM In a Macro

Want to use a worksheet function (such as SUM) from within a macro? Here's how easy it is to accomplish the task.

Discover More

Relative VBA Selections

Need to select a cell using a macro? Need that selection to be relative to the cell you currently have selected? Here are ...

Discover More

Creating Dependent Cells

Making the values in two cells mirror each other may seem like a desirable thing to do. It can be done, as discussed in ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is four minus 2?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.