Question

I have a cell that has Latitude and Longitude coordinates in three different forms. Content within the cells looks like this:

35°21′N 81°47′W / 35.35°N 81.79°W / 35.35; -81.79 (Ellenboro (Jan. 11, EF2))
38°46′N 85°28′W / 38.76°N 85.46°W / 38.76; -85.46 (Madison (Jan. 17, EF0))
etc.

I want to extract only the last set of numbers (35.35; -81.79) and put each one in a different row, one for latitude and one for longitude.

How would I go about doing this?

Answer 1

If you’re happy just with using formulas – here’s my solution (assuming original strings are placed in column A starting A2):

1. B2 (Latitude): =TRIM(MID($A2,SEARCH("@",SUBSTITUTE($A2,"/","@",2))+1,SEARCH("@",SUBSTITUTE($A2,";","@"))-SEARCH("@",SUBSTITUTE($A2,"/","@",2))-1)).
2. C2 (Longitude): =TRIM(MID($A2,SEARCH("@",SUBSTITUTE($A2,";","@"))+1,SEARCH("@",SUBSTITUTE($A2,"(","@"))-SEARCH("@",SUBSTITUTE($A2,";","@"))-1)).
3. Autofill down both formulas as you need.

This will return results as strings. If you want them as numbers – just add =VALUE(...) wrapper to each formula. However, my local setting use comma as decimal separator, so I must add one more SUBSTITUTE for handling this.

For your convenience sample file is shared: https://www.dropbox.com/s/twkcln8lozdgga9/CoordsSplit.xlsx