I presume you want to keep the original intact, so you probably
want two helper columns (extra columns) for more flexibility.
The following returns the original value if no left paren,
and doesn't worry about missing right paren.
B1: =IF(ISERR(FIND("(",A1)),TRIM(A1),TRIM(LEFT(A1,FIND("(",A1)-1)))
C1: =IF(ISERR(FIND("(",A1)),"",TRIM(SUBSTITUTE(RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-FIND("(",A1)),")","")))
--or-- if you want number as number and only have numbers in parens not "(123x)"
C1: =IF(ISERR(FIND("(",A1)),"",TRIM(SUBSTITUTE(RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-FIND("(",A1)),")",""))+0)
additional possibilities in on my sorting.htm page.
Worksheet Functions will work faster, but for more complicated things
you might have some interest in ...
Extraction of a Group of Digits and Dashes, posted by Harlan Grove
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/grove_digitsid.htm
"Plzzz" takes a little bit interpretation and is not professional, I would
use "Please" to make things easier to read. Besides many people in
these groups do not use English as their primary language.
Peo Sjoblom said:
Select the column, do data>text to columns, select delimited [..trimmed]