Extracting dates from a cell that contains text

**Zack99** · 08-24-2012, 12:47 PM

Hello,

I have a cell that shows this: "test [ 7/1/2012 -> 8/24/2012 ]

I would like to be able to just have the 2 dates show up in two different cells so I can then calculate how many days there were in between the 2 dates.

Let me know if you can help!

Thank you

**JieJenn** · 08-24-2012, 12:54 PM

Beginning Date: =TRIM(MID(A1,FIND("[",A1)+1,LEN(A1)-FIND("->",A1)-4))
Ending Date: =TRIM(MID(A1,FIND("->",A1)+3,LEN(A1)-FIND("->",A1)-4))

**Richard Buttrey** · 08-24-2012, 01:03 PM

Hi

One way
=VALUE(MID($A1,FIND("[",$A1)+2,FIND("->",$A1)-2-FIND("[",$A1)))
=VALUE(MID(A1,FIND("->",$A1)+2,FIND("]",$A1)-1-FIND("->",$A1)-2))

both formatted as number