Formula Help

[Antriksh5956]

I have this formula and i know what it does but i am not able to understand how it works.

=TRIM(RIGHT(SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(A1)," ",REPT(" ",255)),255))

i am confused as how this formula works and what is the role of "255" in this ?


Thank You!

 

[Peter_SSs]

Welcome to the MrExcel board!

As you know, the formula extract the last "word" from a cell value. By "word" I mean whatever comes after the last space character.

Since we do not know how long the word is going to be we first use TRIM to make sure there are no trailing spaces and then replace all the spaces with 255** spaces.
Then take the right 255 characters. That must give you the last "word" (assuming it is less than 255 characters long ) with a whole bunch (but exact number unknown) of space characters in front of it.
Finally, TRIM removes those leading spaces leaving you with that last "word" only.

** There is nothing special about the 255 (historically I think there was). The lower number the better (for efficiency) but does need to be a number that is larger than the longest "word" you expect to get at the end of a cell.