Google Sheets: How to Extract Text Between Two Characters

You can use the REGEXTRACT function in Google Sheets to extract all text between two specific characters in a cell.

You can use the following syntax to do so:

=REGEXEXTRACT(A2,"this(.*)that")

This particular formula extracts all of the text between the characters “this” and “that” in cell A2.

The following examples show several common ways to extract text between two characters in practice.

Example 1: Extract Text Between Strings

We can type the following formula into cell B2 to extract the text in cell A2 between the strings “ran” and “miles”:

=REGEXEXTRACT(A2,"ran(.*)miles")

We can then click and drag this formula down to each remaining cell in column B:

Google Sheets extract text between two characters

Column B contains the text between the strings “ran” and “miles” for each corresponding cell in column A.

Example 2: Extract Text Between Parentheses

We can type the following formula into cell B2 to extract the text in cell A2 between the parentheses:

=REGEXEXTRACT(A2,"\((.*)\)")

We can then click and drag this formula down to each remaining cell in column B:

Google Sheets extract text between parentheses

Column B contains the text between the parentheses for each corresponding cell in column A.

Note: We had to use a slash as an escape character before the parentheses so that the REGEXTRACT function recognized these characters as parentheses.

Example 3: Extract Text Between Asterisks

We can type the following formula into cell B2 to extract the text in cell A2 between the asterisks:

=REGEXEXTRACT(A2,"\*(.*)\*")

We can then click and drag this formula down to each remaining cell in column B:

Column B contains the text between the asterisks for each corresponding cell in column A.

Note: We had to use a slash as an escape character before the asterisks so that the REGEXTRACT function recognized these characters as asterisks.