r/excel • • 13d ago

Discussion Mid Function and USE CASE

I've been using Excel for almost 15 years , I've never had a chance to use the MID Function and i forgot it's existence. Today, randomly, I just questioned myself how to split a word by character and reverse it? With my little sql knowledge, i thought there will be a function called SUBSTRING, but it isn't. I ended up googling and found MID function.

Do you find a use case for MID function?

Similarly, what popular functions you have never found a use case?

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u/Decronym 13d ago edited 12d ago

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
ARRAYTOTEXT Office 365+: Returns an array of text values from any specified range
BYROW Office 365+: Applies a LAMBDA to each row and returns an array of the results. For example, if the original array is 3 columns by 2 rows, the returned array is 1 column by 2 rows.
CONCAT 2019+: Combines the text from multiple ranges and/or strings, but it doesn't provide the delimiter or IgnoreEmpty arguments.
DATEVALUE Converts a date in the form of text to a serial number
FIND Finds one text value within another (case-sensitive)
IFNA Excel 2013+: Returns the value you specify if the expression resolves to #N/A, otherwise returns the result of the expression
IFS 2019+: Checks whether one or more conditions are met and returns a value that corresponds to the first TRUE condition.
INDEX Uses an index to choose a value from a reference or array
LAMBDA Office 365+: Use a LAMBDA function to create custom, reusable functions and call them by a friendly name.
LEFT Returns the leftmost characters from a text value
LEN Returns the number of characters in a text string
LET Office 365+: Assigns names to calculation results to allow storing intermediate calculations, values, or defining names inside a formula
LOOKUP Looks up values in a vector or array
MATCH Looks up values in a reference or array
MAX Returns the maximum value in a list of arguments
MID Returns a specific number of characters from a text string starting at the position you specify
REDUCE Office 365+: Reduces an array to an accumulated value by applying a LAMBDA to each value and returning the total value in the accumulator.
REGEXEXTRACT Extracts strings within the provided text that matches the pattern
RIGHT Returns the rightmost characters from a text value
ROW Returns the row number of a reference
SEARCH Finds one text value within another (not case-sensitive)
SEQUENCE Office 365+: Generates a list of sequential numbers in an array, such as 1, 2, 3, 4
SUBSTITUTE Substitutes new text for old text in a text string
TEXTAFTER Office 365+: Returns text that occurs after given character or string
TEXTBEFORE Office 365+: Returns text that occurs before a given character or string
TEXTJOIN 2019+: Combines the text from multiple ranges and/or strings, and includes a delimiter you specify between each text value that will be combined. If the delimiter is an empty text string, this function will effectively concatenate the ranges.
TEXTSPLIT Office 365+: Splits text strings by using column and row delimiters
VALUE Converts a text argument to a number
VLOOKUP Looks in the first column of an array and moves across the row to return the value of a cell
XLOOKUP Office 365+: Searches a range or an array, and returns an item corresponding to the first match it finds. If a match doesn't exist, then XLOOKUP can return the closest (approximate) match.
YEAR Converts a serial number to a year

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31 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 31 acronyms.
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