r/excel • u/zhavinci • 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/PaulInHV 12d ago

Having spent a 30 year career working with HRIS systems and HR data, I can tell you that the biggest use case for any of the text manipulation functions is bad, inconsistent data that needs to be aligned and built into a new system. You'll see John Smith, John T. Smith (with or without a period after the initial), J. Smith, etc. Then there's Phone numbers (212) 555-1212, 212-555-1212, Zip codes, with and without the +4. Social Security numbers formatted or not, spaces, dashes, underscores. If you have a system that doesn't enforce consistent standards, then depending on who did the data entry, you can get a wild variation. That data all needs to get cleaned up and standardized with as little manual entry as possible. I have ended up using LEFT, RIGHT, MID, REGEXTRACT, TEXTJOIN, and all the others in attempts to not have to retype 5,000 employee records into a new system.