Excel: last character/string match in a string

Question

I think I get what you mean. Let's say for example you want the right-most \ in the following string (which is stored in cell A1):

Drive:\Folder\SubFolder\Filename.ext

To get the position of the last \, you would use this formula:

=FIND("@",SUBSTITUTE(A1,"\","@",(LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"\","")))/LEN("\")))

That tells us the right-most \ is at character 24. It does this by looking for "@" and substituting the very last "\" with an "@". It determines the last one by using

(len(string)-len(substitute(string, substring, "")))\len(substring)

In this scenario, the substring is simply "\" which has a length of 1, so you could leave off the division at the end and just use:

=FIND("@",SUBSTITUTE(A1,"\","@",LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"\",""))))

Now we can use that to get the folder path:

=LEFT(A1,FIND("@",SUBSTITUTE(A1,"\","@",LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"\","")))))

Here's the folder path without the trailing \

=LEFT(A1,FIND("@",SUBSTITUTE(A1,"\","@",LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"\",""))))-1)

And to get just the filename:

=MID(A1,FIND("@",SUBSTITUTE(A1,"\","@",LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"\",""))))+1,LEN(A1))

However, here is an alternate version of getting everything to the right of the last instance of a specific character. So using our same example, this would also return the file name:

=TRIM(RIGHT(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"\",REPT(" ",LEN(A1))),LEN(A1)))

How about creating a custom function and using that in your formula? VBA has a built-in function, InStrRev, that does exactly what you're looking for.

Put this in a new module:

Function RSearch(str As String, find As String)
    RSearch = InStrRev(str, find)
End Function

And your function will look like this (assuming the original string is in B1):

=LEFT(B1,RSearch(B1,"\"))

With newer versions of excel come new functions and thus new methods. Though it's replicable in older versions (yet I have not seen it before), when one has Excel O365 one can use:

=MATCH(2,1/(MID(A1,SEQUENCE(LEN(A1)),1)="Y"))

This can also be used to retrieve the last position of (overlapping) substrings:

=MATCH(2,1/(MID(A1,SEQUENCE(LEN(A1)),2)="YY"))

---

| Value  | Pattern | Formula                                        | Position |
|--------|---------|------------------------------------------------|----------|
| XYYZ   | Y       | =MATCH(2,1/(MID(A2,SEQUENCE(LEN(A2)),1)="Y"))  | 3        |
| XYYYZ  | YY      | =MATCH(2,1/(MID(A3,SEQUENCE(LEN(A3)),2)="YY")) | 3        |
| XYYYYZ | YY      | =MATCH(2,1/(MID(A4,SEQUENCE(LEN(A4)),2)="YY")) | 4        |

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Whilst this both allows us to no longer use an arbitrary replacement character and it allows overlapping patterns, the "downside" is the useage of an array.

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Note: You can force the same behaviour in older Excel versions through either

=MATCH(2,1/(MID(A2,ROW(A1:INDEX(A:A,LEN(A2))),1)="Y"))

Entered through CtrlShiftEnter, or using an inline INDEX to get rid of implicit intersection:

=MATCH(2,INDEX(1/(MID(A2,ROW(A1:INDEX(A:A,LEN(A2))),1)="Y"),))

tigeravatar and Jean-François Corbett suggested to use this formula to generate the string right of the last occurrence of the "\" character

=TRIM(RIGHT(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"\",REPT(" ",LEN(A1))),LEN(A1)))

If the character used as separator is space, " ", then the formula has to be changed to:

=SUBSTITUTE(RIGHT(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ",REPT("{",LEN(A1))),LEN(A1)),"{","")

No need to mention, the "{" character can be replaced with any character that would not "normally" occur in the text to process.