How do I remove certain text from a cell in Excel?

Question

I have a cell in Excel that contains the following:

@dickfundy @ThatKevinSmith @aliciamalone @MovieMantz @dickfundy nope just Stranger Things Season 2 or Ready Player https:xxxxxxxxxxx

I want to remove the usernames (everything starting with a "@") and I also want to remove the web-link (the "https:xxxxxxxxxxx"), and I want to end up with this in the cell:

nope just Stranger Things Season 2 or Ready Player

I have 60,000 other cells that contain similar text. How do I do this?

Answer 1

I believe your version of Excel has the TEXTJOIN function. That being the case you can use this array-formula

=TEXTJOIN(" ",TRUE,IF((LEFT(TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(A1)," ",REPT(" ",999)),seq_999,999)))="@")+(LEFT(TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(A1)," ",REPT(" ",999)),seq_999,999)),4)="http"),"",TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(A1)," ",REPT(" ",999)),seq_999,999))))

where seq_999 is a named formula that

refers to:  =IF(ROW(INDEX(Sheet1!$1:$65535,1,1):INDEX(Sheet1!$1:$65535,255,1))=1,1,(ROW(INDEX(Sheet1!$1:$65535,1,1):INDEX(Sheet1!$1:$65535,255,1))-1)*999)

To enter/confirm an array formula , hold down ctrl + shift while hitting enter . If you do this correctly, Excel will place braces {...} around the formula seen in the formula bar.

Answer 2

If you deleted up to the last user name (with Replace *@ with nothing) then you might apply:

=LEFT(MID(A1,FIND(" ",A1),LEN(A1)),FIND("http",MID(A1,FIND(" ",A1)+1,LEN(A1))))

Answer 3

As a UDF:

Function FixIt(s As String) As String
    s = CleanUp(s, "@")
    s = CleanUp(s, "http")
    FixIt = Trim(s)
End Function

'remove all text segments beginning with LookFor, up to the next space
'  or until the end of the input string s
Function CleanUp(s As String, LookFor As String) As String
    Dim pos As Long, pos2 As Long, rv As String
    rv = s
    pos = InStr(1, rv, LookFor)
    Do While pos > 0
        pos2 = InStr(pos + 1, rv, " ")
        If pos2 = 0 Then pos2 = Len(rv)
        rv = Left(rv, pos - 1) & Right(rv, Len(rv) - pos2)
        pos = InStr(1, rv, LookFor)
    Loop
    CleanUp = rv
End Function

If you want something robust:

How to use Regular Expressions (Regex) in Microsoft Excel both in-cell and loops