MID in SoftMaker PlanMaker: Extract Text by Position

=MID(TextString, Start, Count)

The documented examples MID("peanut",2,3) → ean and MID("peanut",2,5) → eanut establish that position 1 is the first character. Unlike LEFT and RIGHT, MID has three mandatory arguments; no optional length is documented in the PlanMaker references. The 2021 manual calls the first input Text, while 2024 and 2026 call it TextString; the semantics illustrated in all three manuals agree on the quoted ordinary-text cases.

On a new, empty worksheet, type the following entries into the indicated cells. Treat codes as text, including their leading zeroes. These deliberately use only ordinary ASCII letters, hyphens and digits so that Unicode counting differences are outside the examples.

For row 1, enter the header words without the Markdown bold markers. Each item code is 11 characters: two letters, a hyphen, four digits, another hyphen, and three letters. Enter formulas in empty cells, such as E2 onward, so the example data is never overwritten.

1. The first - in CA-2048-RED occupies position 3. Its first serial digit 2 occupies position 4.
2. Type =MID(A2,4,4) into cell E2.
3. Expected E2: text 2048 (positions 4, 5, 6 and 7).
4. Copy down to E6 and confirm that leading zeroes remain visible as characters.

These outputs are strings. 0052 as an identifier is not interchangeable with numerical 52 in downstream code comparisons.

Try =MID(A2,9,3). Expected: RED. Start position 9 is the first letter of the suffix. Using =MID(A2,9,20) also has expected RED, because the official reference explicitly documents truncating a result at the end of the string. By contrast, =MID(A2,99,3) is expected to return an empty text string based on the official out-of-range example, not an invented error code.

A code may be the right length but have the wrong separators. To label the five sample codes, check the total length and both delimiter positions before extracting the centre:

=IF(AND(LEN(A2)=11,MID(A2,3,1)="-",MID(A2,8,1)="-"),MID(A2,4,4),"Review code")

Expected for A2: text 2048; expected for A3: text 0052. If a row contained CA2048RED (without hyphens), it would instead produce Review code. This rule is structural only: it does not confirm that the prefix is an approved country, the middle field contains digits, or that the suffix is a valid colour. See official LEN, AND and IF.

• Off-by-one: MID(A2,3,4) yields -204 rather than 2048. Count from 1, including punctuation.
• Wrong position with changed formats: 4 and 4 work only for codes matching the example’s fixed 2-4-3 format. For variable-length segments, use a documented delimiter search function after confirming its syntax separately.
• Omitted count: a two-argument MID call is not the three-argument syntax documented by SoftMaker. Supply Start and Count explicitly.
• Blank-looking outcome: if Start is beyond the text length, empty text is documented behavior; inspect LEN(A2) before attributing it to a calculation failure.
• Unexpected missing leading zeroes: MID extracts text; a downstream numeric conversion or a source cell stored as a number can remove leading zeroes. Treat product codes as strings.
• Locale and Unicode: a character is not always the same as a byte or a displayed grapheme; these demonstrations intentionally use ASCII. Do not claim special Unicode handling without native testing.
• Negative Start or Count: the SoftMaker individual function reference does not establish an error value. Test in the target installation rather than copying an Excel-specific error statement as a PlanMaker fact.

• Begin worksheet formulas with =. The PlanMaker 2026 formula basics explicitly requires it.
• Arguments in these English-language SoftMaker references use commas. If your installed locale expects different separators or displays a localized function name, use Formula → Function to verify the spelling and separator; no non-English installation was tested here. Quotation marks around literal strings are ordinary formula syntax.
• SoftMaker’s English PlanMaker 2021, 2024 and 2026 manuals document this function. That is evidence of documentation in those editions, not proof of a first-introduced version or identical behavior on FreeOffice, NX, Android, iOS or every operating-system build. PlanMaker’s general 2026 documentation names Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS, but no platform-specific execution was performed.
• A formula in this guide may be a documentation-supported example or an independently calculated expected output; neither is an observed result from native PlanMaker. The specific example tables below are computed from the printed input strings.

These formula names have the same basic text-extraction/counting purpose in Microsoft Excel. For the ordinary ASCII examples in this guide, Excel’s published formulas imply the same outputs. However, do not assume every locale, date/number conversion, Unicode character (especially emoji or surrogate pairs), file-format conversion, or Excel Compatibility Version 2 case behaves identically in PlanMaker. Microsoft’s current documentation describes newer Unicode behavior for some Excel functions; the SoftMaker individual references do not document an equivalent switch. Workbook transfers and target-platform behavior therefore require testing.

The same terminology in LibreOffice/OpenOffice/Google Sheets is not independent proof of perfect compatibility. Check the target application’s functions, formula separators, text encoding and worksheet locale when migrating.

• SoftMaker PlanMaker — function documentation
• LEN
• AND
• IF
• PlanMaker 2026 formula basics
• MID — PlanMaker 2021
• 2024

Verification status: Official documentation checked; example outcomes were independently reasoned or arithmetically checked where applicable. Not executed in SoftMaker PlanMaker.

• No genuine SoftMaker PlanMaker screenshots are included; this guide does not use mock application images.