When I download bank statements from our bank’s trusty website in to Excel, they don’t appear to be quite user friendly. Well you can read the information and deduce what the transactions are, but analyzing that information presents some challenges.
Have a look at the following superficial bank transactions. They closely resemble what we get from our bank accounts at the office. The cheque numbers are conveniently lumped together with a bunch of zeroes that the bank thought was a good idea.
RIGHT() Excel String Function
Sure you can do a search and identify these cashed cheques but wouldn’t it be nice to have all the cheque numbers neatly displayed in a separate column? This is where Excel’s string functions come in to play.
RIGHT() Excel String Function
RIGHT(Text you are searching, number of characters)
RIGHT(D1,6) will result in the value 985487. Voila, you have successfully extracted the cheque number from the messy string that the bank gave you. The function tells Excel to go to the cell that contains the cheque number (D1) and select the first 6 characters from the RIGHT. The result is the cheque number.
Try using the same principle with the LEFT & MID functions.
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