Removing characters from both sides of a text string in Excel

Yes, you can remove characters from both sides of a text string at the same time using a combination of Excel functions. One way to do this is by using the MID function along with the LEN function.

Here's an example:

Let's say you have a text string in cell A1 that looks like this: "###Hello World###"

To remove the "#" characters from both sides of the text string, you can use the following formula:

1. = MID(A1, LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"#",""))+1, LEN(A1)-2*LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"#","")))

Here's how this formula works:

1. The SUBSTITUTE function is used to count the number of "#" characters in the text string. This is done by replacing all "#" characters with an empty string ("") and then subtracting the length of the resulting string from the length of the original string using the LEN function. This gives us the total number of "#" characters in the string.

2. We then subtract twice the number of "#" characters from the length of the string to get the length of the text string without the "#" characters on both sides.

3. Finally, we use the MID function to extract the text string without the "#" characters. The starting position for the MID function is calculated by subtracting the length of the text string without the "#" characters from the length of the original string (minus one, since we want to start from the first character after the "#" characters).

When you enter this formula in a cell, it will return "Hello World" without the "#" characters on both sides.