How do i create a formula column that pulls text from a certain part of another text column. For example, if I have a sentence that reads “The leafs in Maine look wonderful this time of year, especially since it’s October, but I won’t be able to make it.” But I only want every thing between the two commas which would result in “especially since it’s October”
Is that an actual use case with the commas, or are you looking for something like a substring where you specify a start position and number of characters. Knowing your exact use case will help to get you the correct answer.
commas or any specific symbol. I’ll give you an example, I have this text here.
Embrace Change This Autumn | Let Go Of Perfection | Growth Happens In Letting Go.
I want to break each of these principles into a separate column, using the | as the seperator.
For something like that, you can use a Split Text column to convert the text into an array. You can specify the delimiter in the Split Text column, whether it’s a comma, a pipe, or any other character. Then you can use Single Value columns to pull out each item from the array into separate columns.
If you want, you could do the same thing with a javascript column that has a bit of code to split the text into an array, and return specific parts of that array. Might be a little overkill compared to the other method above, since it’s essentially doing the same thing with pretty much the same number of columns.
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I think it’s a system for the English language - I remember doing something like this in class it’s a rule. That is the sentence can function without the phrase in the symbol (in this case comma)
I bet I’m wrong though 
it just seemed so similar and wanted to share…lol
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thanks, i just don’t understand why it’s so much more difficult than Excel. formulas in Excel can say: give me the first 3 words after the second semicolon, for example.
That’s not what you asked for in your previous two posts. Again I’ll ask, what is your exact use case. I’m sure it’s easily doable, but I don’t understand what you want. I’m kind of getting different answers. Are you breaking down sentences structure? Splitting a string based on a delimiter? Trying to to substring a certain number of characters or words?
I’m not of fan of Excel formulas, but have you tried using the Excel Formula column to do whatever it is you want? Otherwise I would think a series of regular Glide computed columns or javascript can do the same thing. But again, it’s not clear what you are trying to do so it’s hard to help.
what if the number of words within the symbol (semi column) varies how would that work (responding to this query)
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Just throwing a couple more options out there…
There are plenty of options available, but as Jeff already pointed out, which is best depends on the exact use case.
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Whoa… easy there buddy. Your reply here sounds super irritated, not sure why you would reply that way.
I was trying to get an answer for when multiple scenarios that often come up of searching for text within a column. But because you asked for specifics I gave you a specific example.
And your 1st reply answered my question perfectly, so we’re all good.
My followup comment was just saying that in my opinion Glide made something that’s normally very easy in Airtable and Excel a multi-step process. I can work within the rules of this, but I just find it cumbersome.
You can close this topic now.
thanks, I’ll look into this as well!