Extract Substring with Regex or Delimiters | Online Tool

Extract Substring With Regex

Extract substring with regex intent usually means “pull only the part that matches a pattern,” but many real-world tasks can be solved faster using indices or delimiter-based extraction. The WizardOfAZ Extract Substring tool supports two practical methods: extract by start and optional end index, or extract text between two delimiters, which covers common cases like grabbing an ID after “id=” or reading the value between brackets. This approach is safer for non-technical users than writing regex, because you can see the exact boundary markers and avoid mistakes with escaping and greedy matches. If your text has a consistent wrapper—such as quotes, parentheses, or XML-like tags—delimiter extraction behaves like a lightweight “regex capture group” without needing regex syntax. Index-based extraction is useful when strings are fixed-width, such as pulling the first 8 characters of an order code or extracting a substring after a known prefix length. A good workflow is to test on one representative sample, confirm the extracted result is correct, then run it on larger pasted blocks where each line follows the same structure. When the input is messy, pre-clean with Remove Extra Spaces or Remove Line Breaks so the delimiters appear consistently and don’t get split across lines. The result can then be copied into spreadsheets, validation scripts, or other WizardOfAZ tools as the next step in a text-processing chain.

Extract Substring From String

Extract substring from string tasks usually fall into two categories: fixed-position slicing or boundary-based extraction around known markers. This tool supports both: you can specify a start index (and optional end index) for fixed slicing, or define “extract between X and Y” when the content is wrapped by delimiters. Boundary extraction is especially useful for URLs, logs, and semi-structured text because you can pull a value after “user=” or between quotation marks without counting characters. Index extraction is faster when dealing with standardized codes where the meaning is baked into positions, such as “YYYYMMDD” dates or fixed-length SKUs. To reduce mistakes, copy a single example line into a scratch pad and identify the exact delimiter strings you’ll use, including spaces if they are part of the marker. If the same markers appear multiple times on a line, decide whether you want the first match or a later match and adjust the input so the delimiters uniquely frame the desired field. After extraction, spot-check a few lines at the top, middle, and bottom of the result to confirm the rule holds consistently. If you need multiple fields from the same string, extract one field at a time and label outputs so they don’t get mixed during downstream work.

Extract Substring From String Excel

Extract substring from string Excel workflows often use MID, LEFT, and RIGHT for position-based slicing, and FIND to locate a delimiter before extracting. Excel tutorials commonly combine FIND() with MID() to extract text around a marker like a hyphen when strings are inconsistent in length. This online tool is useful when you don’t want to build formulas or when the extraction needs to be done quickly on pasted text before it reaches Excel. The delimiter option mirrors the Excel “FIND then MID” pattern, because you choose the boundary strings directly rather than calculating positions. If you are already in Excel, formulas are ideal for repeatable datasets; if you’re doing a one-off cleanup from a PDF or email, an online extraction step can be faster and less error-prone. A practical hybrid approach is to use this tool to confirm what the correct extracted field should look like, then implement the equivalent Excel formula once the rule is proven. If the delimiter is a character that Excel treats specially (like a quote), the online tool can also help produce a clean sample output for testing. After extracting, paste results into a new Excel column as values so the dataset stays stable when shared.