A to Z of Excel Functions: The MID Function

Welcome back to our regular A to Z of Excel Functions blog. Today we look at the MID function.

The MID function

The MID function returns a specific number of characters from a text string, starting at the position you specify, based upon the number of characters you specify.

The MID function employs the following syntax to operate:

The MID function has the following arguments:

• text: this is required and represents the text string that contains the characters you want to extract
• start_number: this is also required and specifies the position of the first character you want to extract from text.  The first character in text has start_number 1, and so on
• number_of_characters: this argument is mandatory too and specifies the number of characters you want MID to return from the text.

It should be further noted that:

• if start_number is greater than the length of text, MID returns "" (empty text)
• if start_number is less than the length of text, but start_number plus number_of_characters exceeds the length of text, MID returns the characters up to the end of text
• if start_number is less than 1, MID returns the #VALUE! error value
• if number_of_characters is negative, MID returns the #VALUE! error value.

Please see my examples below:

We’ll continue our A to Z of Excel Functions soon. Keep checking back – there’s a new blog post every business day.

A full page of the function articles can be found here.