Extract first number in a string, and the three letters after the first number

Originally Posted by Pete_UK

I assume the apostrophe ( ' ) towards the end of your second sentence is a mis-type.

Pete

Actually not a mistype. Here in Europe, especially in finance, we use an apostrophe as the thousands separator, rather than a comma. Excel number formatting is set up that way for us by default. However, lets ignore the formatting which I can do. I just want the number to come out as 28456.0324.

The reason we use an apostrophe instead of the old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon comma that we learned in school has to do with the French. In France, the comma is used in place of the full stop in numbers. So whereas the Anglo Saxons would write 123.456 the French would write 123,456. It looks like a completely different number. So to avoid confusion in Europe, the apostrophe is commonly used as the thousands separator instead of a comma, especially in Excel.

Of course the brits are no longer in the EU, so I suppose the comma will prevail there.