EXCEL: Multiplying comma separated single-digit numbers in a cell

Question

I have a string of 8 single-digit numbers in a cell separated by commas. I need to multiply each number by 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 in this exact particular order.

If I have A2= a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h I need the result B2= (a*1),(b*2),(c*3),(d*4),(e*5),(f*6),(g*7),(h*8)

eg A2=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 => B2=1,4,9,16,25,36,49,64

I have worked up this formula -

=LEFT(MID(A2,1,1)*1&","&MID(A2,3,1)*2&","&MID(A2,5,1)*3&","&MID(A2,7,1)*4&","&MID(A2,9,1)*5&","&MID(A2,11,1)*6&","&MID(A2,13,1)*7&","&MID(A2,15,1)*8,LEN(A2))

It does work for the first few numbers but I think this is having trouble handling all the numbers. It works fine if I put in 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1

But if I put in 0,0,0,0,0,2,2,2 , I get 0,0,0,0,0,12,14 (which is only 7 results)

And with 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 . there are only 6 results.

I have just recently started learning excel and any help would be very much appreciated.

Answer 1

With Office 365 we use FILTERXML and SUBSTITUTE to create an array of the numbers. Then with TEXTJOIN we put them back together into a string after using SEQUENCE to create an array of 1,2,3,... and multiplying. LET is used so we do not need to repeat the long FILTERXML:

=LET(num,FILTERXML("<t><s>"&SUBSTITUTE(A2,",","</s><s>")&"</s></t>","//s"),TEXTJOIN(",",,num*SEQUENCE(COUNT(num))))

This version does not care how many numbers are in the string.

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The reason yours is doing what it is, is the LEFT(...,LEN(A2)) . It is only returning the same number of characters as the original. Remove that part, it is not needed:

=MID(A2,1,1)*1&"," &MID(A2,3,1)*2&","&MID(A2,5,1)*3&","&MID(A2,7,1)*4&","&MID(A2,9,1)*5&","&MID(A2,11,1)*6&","&MID(A2,13,1)*7&","&MID(A2,15,1)*8