How can I use a Google Sheets formula with regex to find all letters before a specific phrase?

To extract all letters before a specific phrase in Google Sheets using a formula with regular expressions, you can utilize the REGEXEXTRACT function combined with an appropriate regex pattern. Here's how:

Understanding the Formula:

The core function is REGEXEXTRACT, which extracts matching substrings according to a regular expression. The general format is REGEXEXTRACT(text, regular_expression). The regular expression will be designed to find letters preceding your target phrase.

Steps:

1. Identify the Target Phrase:

- Suppose the specific phrase you are looking for is "example". Your formula needs to isolate the letters before this phrase.

2. Construct the Regex:

- The regex pattern ^([a-zA-Z]+)\s?example will work to capture letters before "example". Here's a breakdown:

- ^: Asserts the start of the string.

- ([a-zA-Z]+): Captures one or more letters (both lowercase and uppercase) and store them into a group.

- \s?: Matches an optional single whitespace character.

- example: Matches the literal string "example".

3. Apply the Formula:

- If your text is in cell A1, the Google Sheets formula would look like this:

=REGEXEXTRACT(A1,"^([a-zA-Z]+)\s?example")

Example:

If cell A1 contains the text "ThisIsAn example string", the formula will return "ThisIsAn".

Explanation:

- The formula checks the content of cell A1 and tries to match the regex pattern. The regex locates all letters occurring before "example" and returns it.

Considerations:

- If there are no letters before "example", the formula will return an empty string.

- If there is no "example" in the text the formula will return an error.

By using this formula, you can efficiently extract the letters before a specific phrase within Google Sheets, leveraging the power of regular expressions.

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