Collabora Office TEXTAFTER: Extract a suffix and preserve exact whitespace
Extract delimiter-based suffixes in the new Linux desktop build, with case matching, negative instances and a source-specific match_end warning.
Verification status: See the evidence and test scope described in this guide. How formula examples are checked
Quick answer: =TEXTAFTER("north/east/report";"/";-1) has independently derived result report. With the default instance 1, the result is east/report. The delimiter itself is excluded; any spaces after it remain.
Important source/help difference: keep Match End at its default 0 for ordinary delimiter extraction. In the pinned implementation, Match End = 1 prepends a synthetic boundary at position zero. As a result, =TEXTAFTER("a/b";"/";1;0;1) predicts the entire string a/b, not the ordinary suffix b. The help’s general “end of text” description does not describe this branch accurately.
Syntax and defaults
=TEXTAFTER(Text [; Delimiter [; Instance_Number [; Match_Mode [; Match_End [; If_Not_Found]]]]])
- Text is the source text. The inspected evaluator rejects empty text.
- Delimiter identifies a literal substring. Multiple delimiters can be supplied as an array or range, but this guide’s worked extraction uses a single delimiter.
- Instance_Number defaults to 1. A negative integer counts delimiter occurrences from the end.
- Match_Mode defaults to 0, case-sensitive; 1 requests case-insensitive matching.
- Match_End defaults to 0. Its build-specific behavior is described above and below.
- If_Not_Found is a fallback; omitted, a failed match produces the help’s #N/A / internal
NotAvailableresult.
Optional positions need their separators when later options are supplied. The official 26.04 help permits an omitted delimiter; with Match End = 0 the source then finds no real delimiter, so it reaches fallback/error rather than splitting into characters.
Worked example: parse a route-like label
Put the text north/east/report in A1. Evaluate the following independently reproducible expressions:
| Formula | Expected text |
|---|---|
=TEXTAFTER(A1;"/") |
east/report |
=TEXTAFTER(A1;"/";2) |
report |
=TEXTAFTER(A1;"/";-1) |
report |
The slashes divide the string into three segments. The first formula returns everything after the first slash, including the second slash. The second and third select the same final occurrence by different numbering rules. TEXTAFTER does not return an array of all segments; use TEXTSPLIT for that job.
No worksheet is required to understand the coordinate proof: the suffix starts immediately after the selected delimiter and extends to the end of the original string. The expected strings are source-derived examples, not native observations.
Advanced use: tolerant labels with an explicit fallback
=TEXTAFTER("a/B/c";"b";1;1) predicts /c. The case-insensitive search recognizes B, but the returned substring keeps the source’s original characters. This is not a command to lowercase the result, nor a guarantee about every locale-specific case mapping.
For a missing separator, =TEXTAFTER("abc";"/";1;0;0;"missing") returns the text missing in the inspected branch. Choose a marker that cannot be confused with valid data. An explicit numeric fallback 0 is obtained through the string helper and becomes text “0”; do not assume it is a numerical zero in downstream arithmetic.
Whitespace is data. =TEXTAFTER("To be or not to be";"or") predicts " not to be", including one leading space. The published example’s prose omits that space, but the evaluator copies the substring without trimming. If you need normalization, make it a separate, intentional transformation.
Boundaries, instances and failures
Instance 0 returns internal NotAvailable before matching; a fallback does not make zero a valid occurrence number. An instance beyond the recorded occurrence count uses the fallback when supplied, otherwise the not-available error. An empty source string returns internal IllegalParameter rather than a successful empty suffix.
For Match End = 1 and source a/b, the stored suffix-start positions are 0 and 2. Thus instance 1 returns a/b, instance 2 returns b, and instance −1 also returns b. This synthetic-boundary ordering follows ScTextBeforeOrAfter(false). It must not be inferred from another engine’s TEXTAFTER contract or from TEXTBEFORE’s different boundary placement.
Empty delimiters are skipped by this search. Delimiters are literal, not regular expressions or wildcard patterns. Searches advance past each matched delimiter, so overlapping matches are not independently counted. Native UI error spelling, extreme instance limits and locale-dependent case behavior remain untested here.
Product scope, compatibility and evidence
This guide covers the new Collabora Office desktop for Linux, using the Flathub source tag coda-26.04.4.3-1 and commit 81339d176148d0d5c81ff05d82540f58f8aaa117. The official desktop release notes and Linux package manifest identify that product/build. The package manifest is a dated observation from October 18, 2026, rather than an installed-binary check.
The 26.04 function help and exact evaluator source were inspected on October 18, 2026. Expected examples were independently calculated; no Collabora application was run. Expected values and arrays describe source-derived results, not verified keyboard entry or automatic spill behavior. Classic, Online/CODE, other operating systems and file-format round trips require their own checks.
The help identifies this function as outside OpenDocument 1.3 and uses the extension name COM.MICROSOFT.TEXTAFTER. That does not establish lossless export to every spreadsheet format. The first Collabora release introducing it is not established by these sources. It is documented here as available, with no cited retirement or deprecation notice; an undocumented introduction date is not a deprecation claim.
Related functions
- TEXTBEFORE: return the prefix before a selected delimiter
- TEXTSPLIT: return all segments as an array
- CONCAT: join selected text with explicit separators