First off, before answering your questions, here is a revised formula (the
previous one could not detect an 8 or more digit number in front of the 7
digit number you wanted to find...

=MID(A1,MIN(IF(ISNUMBER(--MID(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","x"),ROW(1:99),7))*
ISERR(SEARCH("e",MID(A1,ROW(1:99),7)))*ISERR(FIND( "/",MID(A1,ROW
(1:99),7)))*ISERROR(--MID(A1,ROW(1:99),8))*IF(ROW(1:99)1,ISERROR
(--MID(A1,ROW(1:99),ROW(1:99)-1))),ROW(1:99))),7)

I also changed the limit to text strings up to 99 characters long. If you
could have longer text strings for this formula to process, then change
*all* the 99's in my formula to a number that is equal to the largest total
number of characters that your text could be. I also changed the formulas
cell reference from the arbitrary F5 I used in my previous submission to the
more standard A1 cell reference that is used when the actual cell reference
is unknown.

Okay, first off, the double minus sign is a means of converting the text
representation of a number into an actual numeric value. Excel will does
this conversion automatically whenever the text representation of a numeric
value is used in a numerical calculation. Putting the double minus sign in
front force Excel to attempt to multiply the text by minus one twice
(--TextNumber is the same as doing this...

-1*-1*TextNumber

If TextNumber is the actual representation of a numerical value, then that
number will be returned (because minus one times minus one is equivalent to
plus 1); if it is not the actual representation of a numerical value,
attempting to multiply it by the first minus sign (which is equivalent to
minus 1) will generate an error. So my code uses the double minus sign to
attempt to change the text at each point of the array's iteration to see if
ISNUMBER and ISERROR is true or not in order to calculate the values
necessary to retrieve the 7 digit number you are after.

And the above explanation is the key to understanding the second part of
your question. There are two problems with converting the text
representation of a number to an actual value... numbers that are powers of
10 (Excel uses and E, for exponent I'm guessing, to indicate a power of 10;
for example 1.23E4 is the same thing as 1234) and dates (which Excel works
with as offsets for January 1, 1900; so the human readable date of 7/20/2009
is really 40014). So, as the array formula iterates down the text, it will
would see text constructions like these 7 character long pieces of text...
1.23E45 and 07/20/09... as numbers when the double minus sign is applied to
them, so I needed to filter these "false positives" out if they occurred
before your actual 7 digit number. I handled this by looking for an embedded
"e" (either upper or lower case), for the E-Notation problem, or a date
separator symbol which is the slash in my system (but which can vary
depending on regional settings).

--
Rick (MVP - Excel)


"Eric_NY" wrote in message
...
Thanks. I'll need to take some time to decipher this. But first, can you
explain:

- What's the function of the double minus sign in the formula?
- Why does the date separator come into play here at all? The only thing I
need to do is to look for a 7-digit number in a text field where we know
nothing at all about the rest of the contents. Why should the operation of
a
formula be dependent upon extraneous information, such as how a date is
formatted? The rest of the text string needs to be considered as a fully
arbitrary series of characters; in other words, the function needs to work
entirely irrespective of the remainder of the field.

Thanks for your help.

"Rick Rothstein" wrote:

I forgot to include the note regarding array-entered formulas. Here is my
message again, but with the note...

In case you want to consider it, here is a non-RegEx array-entered**
formula
that will do what you want...

=MID(F5,MIN(IF(ISNUMBER(--MID(SUBSTITUTE(F5," ","x"),ROW(1:30),7))*
ISERR(SEARCH("e",MID(F5,ROW(1:30),7)))*ISERR(FIND( "/",MID(F5,ROW
(1:30),7))),ROW(1:30))),7)

**Commit this formula using Ctrl+Shift+Enter, not just Enter by itself

Note though, that this formula is dependent on what your default date
separator is. Mine is the slash character (/) and that is what I used in
the
FIND function call... if your default date separator is a different
symbol,
then just replace my slash with that character.

--
Rick (MVP - Excel)


"Rick Rothstein" wrote in message
...
In case you want to consider it, here is a non-RegEx array-entered**
formula that will do what you want...

=MID(F5,MIN(IF(ISNUMBER(--MID(SUBSTITUTE(F5," ","x"),ROW(1:30),7))*
ISERR(SEARCH("e",MID(F5,ROW(1:30),7)))*ISERR(FIND( "/",MID(F5,ROW
(1:30),7))),ROW(1:30))),7)

Note though, that this formula is dependent on what your default date
separator is. Mine is the slash character (/) and that is what I used
in
the FIND function call... if your default date separator is a different
symbol, then just replace my slash with that character.

--
Rick (MVP - Excel)


"Eric_NY" wrote in message
...
I just read your message from last Friday.

The text is free format. Users can enter it in whatever format they
want.
The 7-digit number is somewhere within the text. I've glanced through
it
and
in the samples I've seen, there's no consistency in what appears
before
or
after the 7-digit number.

I used the regex solution that Ron Rosenfeld suggested, and adjusted
the
regular expression by removing the "\b" before and after the "\d{7}".

"Rick Rothstein" wrote:

I would still be interested in the answer to my questions...

"Is the number always precede by a space when the number
is interior to the text? What about that "dot" after it... is
there
always a dot following it? If the dot might not always be
there, is there always a space after the number when it is
interior to the text?"

--
Rick (MVP - Excel)


"Eric_NY" wrote in message
...
"However, with the morefunc add-in there is an option, I believe it
is
a
menu
option, to install the add-in as part of the workbook. "

I can't find that option. Where should I look for it? Which menu?

"Ron Rosenfeld" wrote:

On Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:04:04 -0700, Eric_NY

wrote:

Ron - Thanks. I'm going to try the Longre morefunc add-in.

If I use the add-in functions and then send the sheet to someone
by
email,
will the formulas still work? Or does the recipient also have to
install
the
add-in separately on his own machine?

Thanks for your help.

Ordinarily no. They would have to install it themselves.
However,
with
the
morefunc add-in there is an option, I believe it is a menu option,
to
install
the add-in as part of the workbook. If you do that, it will then
be
usable by
the recipient with no particular effort on his part.

One caution concerning the add-in -- it will not work on strings
that
are
longer than 255 characters. This, apparently is an .xll
limitation,
and
there
is no good way around it within the add-in.

By the way, if you should use the UDF approach, the UDF should be
embedded
within the workbook, so its use should be transparent to your
user.
But
there
are a lot of other useful functions in morefunc.
--ron