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

Understanding Background Saving

Word has the capability to save your work, in the background, while you continue to edit your documents. This tip ...

Discover More

Margin Notes in Word

Some types of documents rely upon margin notes to the left or right of your main text. Getting these to appear in Word ...

Discover More

Finding the Lowest Numbers

Need to find the lowest numbers in a range of values? It's easy to do using the SMALL worksheet function, or you can use ...

Discover More

Best-Selling VBA Tutorial for Beginners Take your Excel knowledge to the next level. With a little background in VBA programming, you can go well beyond basic spreadsheets and functions. Use macros to reduce errors, save time, and integrate with other Microsoft applications. Fully updated for the latest version of Office 365. Check out Microsoft 365 Excel VBA Programming For Dummies today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Deleting Worksheet Code in a Macro

When creating an application in VBA for others to use, you might want a way for your VBA code to modify or delete other ...

Discover More

Making Modal Dialog Boxes Appear in Front of Workbooks

Perhaps the most common way of communicating with programs is through the use of dialog boxes. We expect dialog boxes to ...

Discover More

Default Worksheet when Opening

When opening a workbook, you may want to make sure that a particular worksheet is always displayed first. The only way to ...

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 3 + 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.