You’re probably aware of the many ways that you can manipulate text in Excel. There’s Text-to-Columns, there’s Power Query and there’s a whole bunch of functions including LEFT, RIGHT, MID, FIND, SUBSTITUTE and so on.
When Microsoft added the TEXTJOIN function in 2016, many users asked why there was no TEXTSPLIT function to allow you to break apart a text string. Some people created their own through VBA and latterly LAMBDA but the less tech-savvy continued to rely on the aforementioned Text-to-Columns.
Well now our wishes have come true. This week Microsoft added 14 new functions to Excel including 3 that will make text manipulation much easier.
In this video I cover those 3 new functions, namely TEXTSPLIT, TEXTAFTER and TEXTBEFORE.
NOTE: If you don’t see these functions in your copy of Excel, they are currently available to Windows and Mac users running on the Beta Channel. As at today (18 March 2022) Windows users need Version 2203 (Build 15104.20004) or later whilst Mac users need Version 16.60 (Build 22030400) or later. These requirements may change in the future.
Even though I’m signed up to the Beta Channel, the only machine that they were available on at the time of recording was my Mac. However they work the same on both platforms