Extracting Date/Time from comment cell - vba

Question

I have a comment field with cells containing text like this:
Cancelled by user at 2018-01-03 03:11:57 without charge
I want to get the date and time information, but it may not always be in the 3rd/4th from last spaces, otherwise I might try to do some sort of complicated split of the cell. Is there an "in cell" way extract the date time information? Or will this need a VBA script? I prefer the former, but I'm trying to make a macro to simplify my life anyway, so VBA would work too.

Answer 1

I'd propose the following formula:
=MID(A1,FIND("at 20",A1)+3,19)
This would require that the date is always preceded by the word 'at' and the date string starts with 20.

Answer 2

You can try this function. It splits the string checking for items that have the first letter numeric, and builds a result string of just the date information.
Public Function ParseForDate(sCell As String) As String
Dim vSplit As Variant
Dim nIndex As Integer
Dim sResult As String
vSplit = Split(sCell, " ")
For nIndex = 0 To UBound(vSplit)
If IsNumeric(Left$(vSplit(nIndex), 1)) Then
sResult = sResult & vSplit(nIndex) & " "
End If
Next
ParseForDate = Trim$(sResult)
End Function
If you wanted to use it in a formula it would look something like this:
=ParseForDate(A1)
To use it in a VBA routine:
Dim s as String
s = ParseForDate(Range("A1"))

Answer 3

Non-VBA solution: (this is assuming the date format is always the same for all cells)
= MAX(IFERROR(DATEVALUE(MID(A1,ROW(INDEX($A:$A,1):INDEX($A:$A,LEN(A1)-19)),20)),0))
+MAX(IFERROR(TIMEVALUE(MID(A1,ROW(INDEX($A:$A,1):INDEX($A:$A,LEN(A1)-19)),20)),0))
Note this is an array formula, so you must press Ctrl+Shift+Enter instead of just Enter when typing this formula.
You will obviously then need to format the cell as a date and time, but this formula gets the numerical value that Excel uses for its internal date and time system.

Answer 4

Using a regex will enable you to fetch the date and time, irrespective of its placement in the string. The following solution will work if the date and time are of the same format as shown in the example string.
Code:
Sub getDateTime()
Dim objReg, matches, str
str = Sheet1.Cells(1, 1).Value 'Change this as per your requirements
Set objReg = CreateObject("vbscript.regexp")
objReg.Global = True
objReg.Pattern = "\d{4}(?:-\d{2}){2}\s*\d{2}(?::\d{2}){2}"
If objReg.test(str) Then
Set matches = objReg.Execute(str)
strResult = matches.Item(0)
MsgBox strResult
End If
End Sub
Click for Regex Demo
Regex Explanation:
\d{4} - matches 4 digits representing the year
(?:-\d{2}){2} - matches - followed by 2 digits. {2} in the end repeats this match 2 times. Once for getting MM and the next time for DD
\s* - matches 0+ whitespaces to match the space between the Date and Time
\d{2} - matches 2 digits representing the HH
(?::\d{2}){2} - matches : followed by 2 digits. The {2} in the end repeats this match 2 times. First time for matching the :MM and the next time for matching the :SS
Screenshots:
Output:

Answer 5

This will be good for about 90 years (using cell C3 for example):
Sub GetDate()
Dim s As String
s = Range("C3").Comment.Text
arr = Split(s, " ")
For i = LBound(arr) To UBound(arr)
If Left(arr(i), 2) = "20" Then
msg = arr(i) & " " & arr(i + 1)
MsgBox msg
Exit Sub
End If
Next i
End Sub