Excel – Extract Unique Substring from Range of Excel

microsoft excelmicrosoft-excel-2010microsoft-excel-2016vba

I have cell values with names that are fairly close to each other. I would like to extract a common sub-string.

Here is an example. 

1100_250_Jump_12HR_100MD_S_run1 
1100_250_Jump_12HR_100MD_S_run2
1100_250_Jump_12HR_100MD_S_run3 
1100_250_Jump_12HR_100MD_S_run4 
1101_250_Jump_12HR_100MD_U_run5 
1101_250_Jump_12HR_100MD_U_run6 
1102_250_Jump_12HR_100MD_U_run7 
1102_250_Jump_12HR_100MD_U_run8 
1102_250_Jump_12HR_100MD_U_run9 
1102_250_Jump_12HR_100MD_U_run10

The output should be _250_Jump_12HR_100MD_

How can I extract a common sub-string in Excel?

I checked similar questions but could not find the answer.

Best Answer

Based on the UDF in the link I posted in comments:

Option Explicit


Public Function CSTMatch3(Target1 As Range, Target2 As Range) As String

CSTMatch3 = ""

Dim myString As String, String1 As String, String2 As String, i As Long, j As Long, noChar As Long

noChar = 0

'The goal here is to assign the larger String to the variable String1
If Target1 = Target2 Then
    CSTMatch3 = Target1
    Exit Function
End If

If Len(Target1) >= Len(Target2) Then
    String1 = Target1
    String2 = Target2
Else
    String1 = Target2
    String2 = Target1
End If

For j = 1 To Len(String2)
    For i = 1 To Len(String1) - j
        If InStr(String2, Mid(String1, i, j)) Then
            myString = Mid(String1, i, j)
            noChar = noChar + 1
            Exit For
        End If
    Next i
Next j

CSTMatch3 = myString

End Function

Then, assuming you strings are in column A, Use the UDF in B1 like this:

=CSTMatch3(A1,A2)

Then in B2:

=CSTMatch3(A2,B1)

And populate down.

Cells in column B in any given row now show the common string for all cells in A up to that row.

enter image description here

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