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Excel - Sorting Data in Excel: Extracting and Sorting by Middle Digits Tutorial - Episode 519

683 views · Published 1 September 2009 · 2:25 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: MrExcel.com · 2009 · Education

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Microsoft Excel Tutorial: Sorting Data in Excel: Extracting and Sorting by Middle Digits Tutorial.

Welcome back to the MrExcel netcast! In today's episode, we have a question from George about sorting data in Excel. If you have a question for the netcast, don't hesitate to send me an email or leave a voicemail and we'll try to feature it in a future podcast.

George's data set is a bit tricky - he has a serial number in column A that is formatted as four digits, a space, another four digits, a space, and then seven digits at the end. However, he needs to be able to sort by the middle set of digits. My solution to this is to insert a temporary column, extract the middle digits, sort by that column, and then delete it.

To do this, we first need to insert a column between A and B. Then, we use the MID function to grab the middle digits. We start by typing "=MID(" and then select the cell in A2. We then need to specify which position we want to start in - in this case, it's the sixth position since we have four digits and a space before the middle set. Finally, we specify how many characters we want to grab - in this case, it's four. We can then copy this formula down using the fill handle and we now have a new column with just the middle portion of the serial numbers.

After sorting by this new column, we can delete it and our data is now sorted correctly. The MID function is just one of many useful text functions in Excel, including LEFT and RIGHT which can be used to grab the leftmost or rightmost characters in a string. Thanks to George for sending in this question and don't forget to send in your own questions for a chance to be featured in a future netcast.

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Table of Contents:
(00:00) Sorting by middle set of digits
(00:40) Solution using temporary column
(00:50) Inserting a column
(01:00) Using the MID function
(01:26) Copying the formula
(01:36) Sorting the data
(01:47) Other functions for grabbing characters
(01:57) Clicking Like really helps the algorithm

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George has a dataset today where a serial number contains 3 groups of digits in a single column. George needs to be able to sort by the middle group of digits. Episode 519 shows you how.

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