VBA – Find the nth Word in a String of Text

Return nth Word in String of Text

The following function will find the nth word in a string:

Function Find_nth_word(Phrase As String, n As Integer) As String
Dim Current_Pos As Long
Dim Length_of_String As Integer
Dim Current_Word_No As Integer

Find_nth_word = ""
Current_Word_No = 1

'Remove Leading Spaces
Phrase = Trim(Phrase)

Length_of_String = Len(Phrase)

For Current_Pos = 1 To Length_of_String
    If (Current_Word_No = n) Then
        Find_nth_word = Find_nth_word & Mid(Phrase, Current_Pos, 1)
    End If

    If (Mid(Phrase, Current_Pos, 1) = " ") Then
     Current_Word_No = Current_Word_No + 1
    End If
Next Current_Pos

'Remove the rightmost space
Find_nth_word = Trim(Find_nth_word)

End Function

It needs two arguments – the phrase that is to be searched and the word number:

Find_nth_word(“Automateexcel ls the worlds favourite Excel site”,4)

Will return “world”.

A blank is returned if the number of words in the phrase is less than the word number specified.

So: Find_nth_word(“Automateexcel ls the worlds favourite Excel site”,12)
Will return blank as there are not 12 words in the phrase “Automateexcel ls the worlds favourite Excel site”.

Download

To download the .XLSM file from this article, click here

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