Skip to content
Free Excel Tutorials
  • Home
  • Excel For Beginners
  • Excel Intermediate
  • Advanced Excel For Experts

Data Analysis

  • How to Create One and Two Variable Data Tables in Excel
  • How to Create Column Chart in Excel
  • Move chart to a separate worksheet in Excel
  • How to create dynamic reference table name in Excel
  • Conditional Formatting Data bars Examples in Excel

References

  • Find closest match in Excel
  • How to get address of last cell in range in Excel
  • How to get last row in mixed data with blanks in Excel
  • How to use Excel ROWS Function
  • How to get first column number in range in Excel

Data Validations

  • Excel Data validation must begin with
  • Prevent invalid data entering in specific cells
  • Excel Data validation specific characters only
  • Excel Data validation number multiple 100
  • Excel Data validation whole percentage only

Get position of 2nd 3rd and more instance of character in Excel

by

To get the position of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. instance of a specific character inside a text string, you can use the FIND and SUBSTITUTE functions.

Note: we use “~” in this case only because it rarely occurs in other text. You can use any character that you know won’t appear in the text.

Formula

=FIND("~",SUBSTITUTE(text,char,"~",instance))

Explanation

In the example shown, the formula in E4 is:

=FIND("~",SUBSTITUTE(B4,"x","~",D4))

How this formula works

At the core, this formula uses the fact that the SUBSTITUTE function understands “instance”, supplied as an optional forth argument called “instance_num”. This means you can use the SUBSTITUTE function to replace a specific instance of a character in a text string.  So:

SUBSTITUTE(B4,"x","~",D4)

replaces only the 2nd instance (2 comes from D4) of “x” in text in B4, with “~” character. The result looks like this:

100×15~50

Next, FIND locates the “~” inside this string and returns the position, which is 7 in this case.

Post navigation

Next Post:

Create One-dimensional and Two-dimensional Array

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Learn Basic Excel

Ribbon
Workbook
Worksheets
Format Cells
Find & Select
Sort & Filter
Templates
Print
Share
Protect
Keyboard Shortcuts

Categories

  • Charts
  • Data Analysis
  • Data Validation
  • Excel Functions
    • Cube Functions
    • Database Functions
    • Date and Time Functions
    • Engineering Functions
    • Financial Functions
    • Information Functions
    • Logical Functions
    • Lookup and Reference Functions
    • Math and Trig Functions
    • Statistical Functions
    • Text Functions
    • Web Functions
  • Excel VBA
  • Excel Video Tutorials
  • Formatting
  • Grouping
  • Others

Logical Functions

  • Complete List of Excel Logical Functions, References and Examples
  • How to use Excel AND Function
  • OR function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • TRUE function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • How to use Excel FALSE Function

Date Time

  • DAYS function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • How to calculate Quarter of Date in Excel
  • Convert decimal minutes to Excel time
  • MONTH function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • How to get same date next year or previous year in Excel

Grouping

  • Group times into 3 hour buckets in Excel
  • Group arbitrary text values in Excel
  • How to randomly assign data to groups in Excel
  • Group numbers with VLOOKUP in Excel
  • Running count group by n size in Excel

General

  • Count cells less than in Excel
  • How to set or clear a print area in Excel Worksheet
  • Spell Check in Excel
  • Count cells that do not contain many strings in Excel
  • How to calculate percent variance in Excel
© 2025 xlsoffice . All Right Reserved. | Teal Smiles | Abbreviations And Their Meaning