Skip to content
xlsoffice. All Rights Reserved
  • Home
  • Excel For Beginners
  • Excel Intermediate
  • Advanced Excel For Experts

Lookup and Reference Examples

  • How to get last column number in range in Excel
  • How to retrieve first match between two ranges in Excel
  • How to calculate two-way lookup VLOOKUP in Excel Table
  • VLOOKUP function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • How to use Excel LOOKUP Function

Data Analysis Examples

  • Excel Bar Chart
  • How to Create Thermometer Chart in Excel
  • How to Create One and Two Variable Data Tables in Excel
  • How To Load Analysis ToolPak in Excel
  • How to calculate correlation coefficient Correlation in Excel

Data Validation Examples

  • Excel Data validation must begin with
  • Data validation must not exist in list
  • Excel Data validation date in next 30 days
  • Prevent invalid data entering in specific cells
  • Excel Data validation specific characters only

How to get last word in a cell in Excel

by

To get the last word from a text string, you can use a formula based on the TRIM, SUBSTITUTE, RIGHT, and REPT functions.

Formula

=TRIM(RIGHT(SUBSTITUTE(text," ",REPT(" ",100)),100))

Explanation

In the example shown, the formula in C6 is:

=TRIM(RIGHT(SUBSTITUTE(B6," ",REPT(" ",100)),100))

Which returns the word “time”.

How this formula works

This formula is an interesting example of a “brute force” approach that takes advantage of the fact that TRIM will remove any number of leading spaces.

Worked Example:   Convert text to date in Excel

Working from the inside out, we use the SUBSTITUTE function to find all spaces in the text, and replace each space with 100 spaces:

SUBSTITUTE(B6," ",REPT(" ",100))

So, for example, with the text string “one two three” the result is going to look like this:

one----------two----------three

With hyphens representing spaces for readability. Keep in mind that there will be 100 spaces between each word.

Worked Example:   Split dimensions into three parts in Excel

Next, the RIGHT function extracts 100 characters, starting from the right. The result will look like this:

-------three

Finally, the TRIM function removes all leading spaces, and returns the last word.

Note: We are using 100 arbitrarily because that should be a big enough number to handle very long words. If you have some odd situation with super long words, bump this number up as needed.

Worked Example:   How to extract name from email address in Excel

Handling inconsistent spacing

If the text you are working with has inconsistent spacing (i.e. extra spaces between words, extra leading or trailing spaces, etc.) This formula won’t work correctly. To handle this situation, add an extra TRIM function inside the substitute function like so:

=TRIM(RIGHT(SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(B6)," ",REPT(" ",100)),100))

This will normalize all spaces before the main logic runs.

Post navigation

Previous Post:

How to find and replace multiple values at same time in Excel

Next Post:

How to get first word in Excel

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
  • How to convert text string to array in Excel
  • Count Number of Words in Excel
  • Extract word that begins with specific character in Excel
  • TEXT function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • How to count specific characters in a cell in Excel
  • Create date range from two dates in Excel
  • Sum through n months in Excel
  • How to get same date next year or previous year in Excel
  • How to calculate workdays per month in Excel
  • Convert decimal seconds to Excel time
  • Bond valuation example in Excel
  • ACCRINT function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • Calculate cumulative loan principal payments in Excel
  • DOLLARDE function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • IRR function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
Acronyms, Abbreviations, Initialism & What They Stand For
© 2021 xlsoffice. All Rights Reserved | Teal Smiles