How to cut an paste values within brackets in Excel

there is a formula that allows you to count any number of digits from the right hand side. i don't recall the formula but if i remember it looks something like this:

right ("cell ref", 4)

the above captures the four digits from the right hand side from a particular cell, which will then produce the value:

(21)

cell in B1's formula should read:

=MID(A1, FIND("(",A1)+1, 2)

Using the same Idea, you can do a calculation based on the FIND function, to set the length of the string to "MID".

=MID(A1, FIND("(",A1)+1, (FIND(")",A1)-(FIND("(",A1))-1))

Works for the 2011 version (Mac OSX),
tanoyroy: Most likely that you missed out the "=" at the start of the formula. Using comma is the correct syntax for Excel formulas. ":" is used for Ranges.

Bear in mind that the result from doing this as is results in a string and not a number. So Doing an SUM(B1,B2,...) results in 0.

Adding Value() to the formula allows a Sum, or statistical calculations to be carried out on columns containing the formula.
=Value(MID(A1, FIND("(",A1)+1, (FIND(")",A1)-(FIND("(",A1))-1)))
Then to sum a column simply use SUM(B1:Bn). Hope this helps.

If you have the Bahamas(21) in A1, you could use the following formulas to have (21) showing up on A2 and Bahamas showing up on A3

=MID(A1,SEARCH("(",A1,1),SEARCH(")",A1,1)) -----> This you need to put in A2
=LEFT(A1,SEARCH("(",A1,1)-1) ------>This you need to put in A3

[i] Thanks for your response.
The problem with your solution is that the value contained within brackets can vary in size e.g. less of more than 4..
rgds
tanoyroy@... 6 hrs ago [/i]

Well, it doesn't mean that my response wasn't the exact answer to your exact question.

If you want to add another variable to your question, then build another formula to locate a constant, like the "space" or the "("

the formula will then produce a unique value which tells you where that unique character / constant is located in the string, which will be the number of characters into the string.

then reference that unique value in another formula, such as the one i initially offered where the value 4 can now replaced with the cell referencing the unique value above.

afterwards, you can further clean up the extracted characters with another formula that can replace the "(" and ")" with "", to remove the brackets.

fyi - you can separate all the sub formulas in various cells to ensure that each produces a simplistic and desired value.

later, after you are assured that each sub formula works on its own, you can combine them into a single equation inside a single cell.

as you will find by trial and error, excel has a number of formulas to manipulate text and values. you just have to try them all out on an experimental worksheet to see their potential.