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Excel Strings

Excel Strings. 10 April 2014. What is a String?. Basically, a sequence of characters Character? Letter Or number Or even blank space. What is a String?. Anything can be interpreted as a string regardless of format In an expression (formula) string must be inside double quotes!

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Excel Strings

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  1. Excel Strings 10 April 2014

  2. What is a String? • Basically, a sequence of characters • Character? • Letter • Or number • Or even blank space

  3. What is a String? • Anything can be interpreted as a string regardless of format • In an expression (formula) string must be inside double quotes! • “this is a string” and this is not a string. • Remember to beware cut and paste

  4. We’ve already used strings • =IFERROR(A1,”Oops!”) • Concatenate • Now we’re going to learn to manipulate them

  5. A Few Simple Functions • TRIM: eliminate extra blank space • CLEAN: eliminate non-printing blanks • UPPER: force to upper case • LOWER: force to lower case

  6. Trim • Remember “a ” and “a” aren’t the same • Trim gets rid of • leading blanks • trailing blanks • extra blanks in middle • “ a ” becomes “a” • Very useful when determining if strings equal • Or just eliminating extra whitespace

  7. Clean • Does the same thing for non-printable characters • Need to use it when you get data from the web • Spaces are printable characters • NEED TO USE BOTH • ORDER DOESN’T MATTER

  8. Converting • UPPER – Changes to UPPERCASE • “cookie” becomes “COOKIE” • lower – Changes to lowercase • “SHouT” becomes “shout” • Useful for clean up • Not needed for comparing strings: Excel = is case insensitive • Can be useful in FINDs

  9. Concatenating (formally) • Huh? • It means combining two or more things into one thing • & Anything can be concatenated • “awe” & “some” = “awesome” • Whitespace only matters inside quotes • “a”&“b” same as “a” & “b” • “a ” & “b” NOT the same as “a” & “b”

  10. CONCATENATE Function Also a function called concatenate Same thing as & Can use either Same as SUM or +

  11. Changing Strings • Taking strings apart • Replacing parts of strings

  12. Substring • A substring is also a String • A substring is a part of another string • “cake” is a substring of “birthday cake” • so are “day”, “thd”, and “y cake” • “they” is not, neither is “hello” or “dude”

  13. Referencing characters Each character has a position Note that it starts at 1, not 0

  14. Selecting substrings LEFT – leftmost characters RIGHT – rightmost characters MID – characters in the middle

  15. Length: LEN Finds the length of a String One of the most important functions Relationship between length and position?

  16. How to find functions • Click the function button • Select Text • They actually mean String, but whatever • List of handy functions and other goodies

  17. Searching • Find – case sensitive search • Cake ≠ cake • Search – non-case sensitive search • Cake = cake

  18. Searching for a full word • Just the word will find too many instances • Searching for blanks on both sides loses start and end • How to solve? • Pad the “within” string with blanks before searching

  19. REPLACE (position) • REPLACE • Useful when you know the position of what you want to replace, i.e. the first four characters of a String • You can find position and length • By nature not case sensitive

  20. SUBSTITUTE (string) • SUBSTITUTE • This functions finds and replaces all occurrences of a substring with another String • Allows you to select which instance to substitute • For example, if your String = “the cake isn’t ready” and you substitute “is” for “isn’t” the result is “the cake is ready” • CASE SENSITIVE • Does not return an error if not found

  21. Removing Pieces • If I replace with the null string…

  22. PROPER • Proper – Every word starts with a capital letter Does NOT abide by title rules • CAREFUL! “it’s” will become “It’S” • How to fix? • Find the ‘ • Fix the next character

  23. Finding the First Word • Everything up to the first blank • Find the first blank • That position is the length of the substring THROUGH the blank • First word is the RIGHT substring 1 character less

  24. Finding the LAST Word • This is a lot harder • Find the last blank • Find the number of blanks • Remove all blanks • Difference of the length of the string with blanks and without blanks = number of blanks • Change the last blank to a known character • Find the character • Take the LEFT characters from there

  25. Why is String Manipulation hard? • Lots of little steps • Nested functions are confusing • Use intermediate columns • Or even complete extra pages

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