String Manipulation

Join Strings  |  Left  |  Right  |  Mid  |  Len  |  Instr

In this chapter, you'll find the most important functions to manipulate strings in Excel VBA.

Place a command button on your worksheet and add the code lines below. To execute the code lines, click the command button on the sheet.

Join Strings

We use the & operator to concatenate (join) strings.

Code:

Dim text1 As String, text2 As String
text1 = "Hi"
text2 = "Tim"

MsgBox text1 & " " & text2

Result:



Note: to insert a space, use " "

Left

To extract the leftmost characters from a string, use Left.

Code:

Dim text As String
text = "example text"

MsgBox Left(text, 4)

Result:



Right

To extract the rightmost characters from a string, use Right. We can also directly insert text in a function.

Code:

MsgBox Right("example text", 2)

Result:



Mid

To extract a substring, starting in the middle of a string, use Mid.

Code:

MsgBox Mid("example text", 9, 2)

Result:



Note: started at position 9 (t) with length 2. You can omit the third argument if you want to extract a substring starting in the middle of a string, until the end of the string.

Len

To get the length of a string, use Len.

Code:

MsgBox Len("example text")

Result:



Note: space (position 8) included!

Instr

To find the position of a substring in a string, use Instr.

Code:

MsgBox Instr("example text", "am")

Result:



Note: string "am" found at position 3.